


Shoot the Star

by reraimu



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Gay, John - Freeform, John/Gamzee, M/M, Slash, aliens man, gamzee - Freeform, gamzee makara - Freeform, john egbert - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-19
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-24 19:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reraimu/pseuds/reraimu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why is there purple paint in your backyard? AU Gamzee/John slash Ch.10 up!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So...I haven't seen very many Gamzee/John fics. Imma fix that.

You've never seen a shooting star before, or maybe you have but never realized it. Either way, the stream of vivid white light that's lighting up the sky like a firework sure looks neat! It's practically ripping through the night, shadowing over twinkling stars and leaving trails of glitter and fading light after its wake.

In the heat of it all, you find yourself making a half-assed wish on it, something about Nic Cage or something like that, because wouldn't it be so FANTASTIC to meet him in person? And when the trailing blaze of light finally fades into the darkness, you decide that you've had enough of star-gazing and you gather up your cereal-box telescope and rise up from the grassy earth.

It kinda' sucks that you can already smell the cloying odor that is Super Moist Devil's Food cake wafting from inside the house. Couldn't your Dad take a hint? Sheesh.

\-------------------

It's the next day and you're busy muddling about in your backyard, splashing into puddles of muddy water. You can feel the harsh bite of the water seep into your shoes and numb your toes, the ends of your pants clinging unpleasantly to your ankles. You briefly wonder if you're a bit too old to be doing this sort of thing, because face it, 15 year olds don't spend their time outside anymore, right? They're usually on Facebook or something like that, or twittering about how they're chewing a piece of 5 React gum. It kind of sounds like the sort of thing Dave would do—ironically of course. Dave is all about being ironic.

You're too busy splashing and giggling away as you jump into more murky puddles to even notice that there are smears of purple paint streaked across the white picket fence in front of you, and when you splash into yet another puddle, you notice that this puddle isn't tinged brown with mud like all the rest—it's completely saturated with…purple paint. You make a grimace and quickly jump out of the puddle, looking down at your shoes. Oh great, now your shoes are dyed entirely purple, they look like freaking Barney the dinosaur that's how purple they are. You also realized that the ends of your pants are also dyed the same color.

So you stand there staring at your shoes, a little miffed that your feet are freezing and colored lavender, and you begin to wonder if Dad had been doing some kind of fatherly project of his in the backyard, or whatever else Dads did in their free time. You have half a mind to stomp back inside the house, purple shoes and all, and leave tracks of paint along the floor tiles. Dad would surely be disgruntled, haha!

But then you go still, because you can smell it now. It's a strange scent, a very strong and bitter one, the kind of odor that reminds you of copper pennies and old batteries.

You gasp. It's the smell of blood.


	2. Chapter 2

You frantically search about you, wondering if maybe Mrs. Merlo's dog managed to sneak its way into your backyard again and somehow got itself hurt. You don't see red anywhere, even though the smell of blood is so overbearing and frighteningly close. Something makes you look back down again, at your shoes, and you tilt your head to the side, sniffing the air one more time. You bend down and swipe your index finger along the front of your shoe, the pad of your finger coming away purple. The paint is a bit runny, since it had been diluted in water beforehand, and when you bring your finger closer to your face, the smell of blood completely overrides your senses. You jerk your hand back and frantically wipe the offending liquid off on the side of your jeans.

That wasn't paint. That wasn't paint at all. That purple goop was…it was blood. Now you feel all kinds of wrong.

Your body undergoes a shudder as you frantically wipe your feet against the ground. There's blood on your shoes and blood seeping into your pant legs, and even though it isn't exactly the right color, it still smells horrifically coppery and dammit, why won't it just come off.

An unidentified jerky breath makes you go still.

You straighten yourself out and press your arms to your sides, looking very much like one of those plastic toy soldiers you used to play with when you were little. You're very certain that you heard something gasp or wheeze. It could have been a sigh or a shudder, or whatever, and now you're staring at the white picket fence, blue eyes trailing over the streaks of vivid purple that were already starting to harden and set.

It is by this time that you find yourself staring at the ground again, only this time, you're staring at a bush that sits lining the fence, its branches disturbed and cracked in different directions, and there was even more blood there. It was siphoning into another puddle, still runny and bright and fresh. All your instincts tell you to run back inside and shut the door tight behind you, but for some reason your body doesn't want to act on that notion and you're stuck. Your legs are numb and you can barely even wriggle your toes, and it's possible that your teeth are chattering and making a racket. This was like something out of a movie.

With a deep breath and a gulp, you proceed forward. Your steps are sluggish and wary, your shoes sloshing in the wet earth beneath you. Once or twice you almost slip and land face-first into the grass, but you manage to catch yourself just in time before eating it. And before you know it, you're standing right behind the bush, brushing your fingertips along the spindly leaves dotting splintered branches. You then notice that some of the leaves are coated in thick purple, and you jerk your hand back as if scalded.

You anchor your eyes to the ground again, searching the earth for anything familiar, but all you can see is mud and grass and purple blood.

You go still.

There's a hand. There's a hand poking through the bushes and you don't even bother to second guess yourself before you're trampling through the shrub, the brushwood nicking your arms. When you finally manage to get through, all you can do is stare.

It's, oh god, you don't even know how to describe it.

The hand belongs to a young boy, a teenager, maybe around your age or possibly a little older. The boy is slumped against the picket fence; long, sinewy limbs spread akimbo. His head is turned towards the side, face covered by a mop of course black hair that curls and juts out in all sorts of directions. You now know where all that "paint" came from.

There are horns, of all things, sprouting from the boy's head. They're long and slender and they taper into a fine point at the tip. They kind of remind you of candy corn.

There seems to be a copious amount of that violet tinged blood leaking from his body. There are numerous cuts and gashes decorating the boy's arms, blood running in small rivulets down the length of his arm, elongated fingers streaked purple. His clothes are also shredded and torn, globs of blood pooling underneath the fabric, possibly from injuries on his chest. The boy didn't look good at all. Besides the cuts and tattered clothes, the boy's skin looks clammy and gray—wait no scratch that, his skin is literally gray. Did he have some sort of skin condition or something? You've never encountered someone with gray skin before. It was a strange color, and it was making you uneasy.

You make your way closer, the soles of your shoes sinking into the muddy earth, your shoelaces staining brown and purple. Just when you're only about a foot away from the strange boy, you hear a growl. It's a guttural sound, a sound that you can practically feel as it dances along your skin. You back away and the growling lessens into a soft rumble. You realize that the sound had come from the boy. To test this theory, you step closer once more, and again that growl rolls out loud and potent. You step away, licking your lips.

"Son!"

You nearly ram yourself back into the fence. You jump out from behind the bush to find your dad standing in the doorway, adjusting his fedora that sits neatly atop his head.

"I'm going to Costco to pick up a few things," your Dad tells you. He looks at your purple stained pants and quirks his head, but doesn't question you. "Don't open the door for anyone, you hear?"

You quickly nod your head and watch as he turns around and heads back into the house. When you hear the front door close and the sound of his tires pulling away from the driveway, you know the coast is clear. Costco is about a 20 minute drive from where you live. Knowing your Dad, he'll probably spend at least two hours shopping for baked good ingredients, no matter how much you loath his baking. However, given the situation, it seems more like a blessing this time around.

Your attention immediately focuses back to the boy and your find yourself nearly careening around the bush, ignoring how that rumbling growl grows louder with each step you take. You stare at the boy's battered and bruised body, your insides churning as you bite your lip out of apprehension. You seriously don't know what to do. It's not every day you find a gray skinned boy lying nearly unconscious in your backyard.

"Hey," you say, and you mentally kick yourself. That sounded so lame. You could have come up with something better than that. You were best friends with a Strider for Christ's sake! You gulp; you can practically feel the wad of fear sticking fast in your throat.

"Do you need help?" you try again this time, and you're a bit more satisfied with your question. You wait patiently for the boy to answer you, but when a minute goes by and he hasn't even bothered to respond, you take the initiative once more. You're ready to turn around and sprint off towards the house, throwing a quick, "I'll call someone!" behind your back, before something stops you.

There's a sort of stabbing pain at your left wrist, as if a myriad of needles had somehow ripped into your flesh. You squint your eyes shut because the pain is pretty fierce.

"No….motherfucker…"


	3. Chapter 3

So he can speak.

Your entire body goes still at that completely throaty utterance. It sounded a bit on the phlegmy side, but that's completely understandable because the guy has gashes littering his body for crying out loud! You have a hard time believing that a voice like that belongs to such a distressed looking boy. Why couldn't you sound like that, all deep and throaty and mangritty? You then think to yourself that just because you haven't quite reached puberty yet, doesn't mean it's the same case for everyone.

Hesitantly, you turn your head and cast your eyes to the ground once more, your eyes growing wide as your breath hitches in your throat. There are claws at your wrists—talons really, all sharp and serrated and tinged yellow. Your mind is reeling and you're starting to feel a little dizzy. People don't have claws, you think to yourself, trying to qualm your fluttering heart. You wonder if they're counterfeit, possibly bought from a Halloween costume vendor, but you quickly dispel the thought because the boy's claws are too thick and they're starting to really hurt as they continue to pierce through your skin. Before you know it, there are small beads of bright red blood bubbling from your wrist, some of the substance pooling around the boy's claws.

You try to jerk your arm back, but the boy's grip is firm and relentless. With panic festering inside you, you look across and find that he's staring at you, and wow, his face. You've never seen a face quite like that. His face is crusted over with some white substance that sort of resembles actual paint. Some of it is smeared around his mouth and his eyes and clinging to random strands of black hair, but the paint isn't what you're really concerned about. It's his eyes, and his teeth, and Jesus Christ, those three diagonal gashes that are streaking across his face like purple colored streamers. His mouth is open just a tad, revealing saw-like teeth that poke out his mouth and rest along his lips. Purple blood is mixed along with the white paint around his mouth, and you believe you can see bits of neon green in there, although you have no idea where that color even came from in the first place.

His eyes are the most unsettling. The entire sclera is colored golden yellow, and his irises are a diluted gray color that look kind of purple as the light hits them. When he blinks up at you, claws still pressed into your skin, you jump. He blinks like a cat. There's a clear filmy membrane that closes horizontally over his eyes, kind of like a third eyelid, and it really kind of creeps you out because you've only ever seen that kind of thing on the neighborhood stray cat! You come to a conclusion: this guy…this guy wasn't human. He couldn't be. Either that or he has some pretty amazing costume make-up on.

"I need to get you some help!" you nearly shout at him, because you're nervous and shaking and all you want to do is help him. You want to be a good samaritan, just how your father always raised you to be, even if the boy you want to help doesn't look human at all. It's sort of strange why this doesn't frighten you as much as you thought it would.

"No," he growls, nimble gray fingers wrapping further around your wrist. He suddenly tugs you forward and you fall onto the wet grass on your knees, inches away from his bloodied face. He says it softer this time, as if all his energy had been zapped out from him. "No."

And then he collapses, his face planting into a puddle mixed with mud and blood.

Startled, you quickly wrap your arms around his shoulder and pull him out, rolling the boy out on his back, safe and away from any wandering puddles. You don't want the guy to suffocate while he was out of it! You hope he's just passed out anyway. You place your finger underneath his nose because you don't really know how to feel someone's pulse, and you're relieved when you feel warm puffs of air against your skin. He's breathing; he's alive.

You want to call the police or get one of your neighbors over here to help you, but you remember his growled warning and you find yourself fearing for your safety. What would happen if you called someone over for help? Would he tear you to pieces with those talons of his? You come to a decision: you're still going to help him, because that's what Jesus would do and you can't just leave him out here. Unfortunately, you're going to have to stash him somewhere.

'Am I really going to do this?' you ask yourself. Are you really going to nurse this boy back to health underneath your father's nose, without any help? You don't even take the time to think about about it. Yes, yes you are. For some strange reason, the boy reminds you of something, something that should be very familiar to you, but you can't for the life of you figure out what it is. It frustrates you actually. There's a wriggling feeling inside you that's telling your brain that you're forgetting something important here, but you tell your brain to shoosh and it quiets down.

You start planning: you can always hide him in your room. Dad never goes into your room anyway. His injuries don't look too bad, and when you say that, you mean that it seems like he only has surface wounds rather than internal injuries, although you still want to take a look at his chest just to be sure. There's nothing a little bit of peroxide and gauze can't fix. By the time the boy is healed and everything, you can just tell him to leave and find his family or something. It'll be like none of this ever happened.

You notice that he isn't growling at your close proximity and you feel even more relieved. Maybe you can do this properly then. You crawl forward on your hands and knees and you sidle up next to him, tugging his body up by his arms. With some effort, you manage to sling his arm over your shoulder. You find yourself hauling him up by his arm, the side of his body pressed flush against your own as you teeter and totter from side to side, trying to find your balance. When you manage to find it, you take slow and measured steps across the lawn, his feet dragging along the wet grass. You secretly hope those weren't his favorite shoes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH WOW I'M SO SORRY. I totally forgot to post chapter 4 on this site! sorry. ;3;

You're sprawled on your back on the floor right before the first step of the staircase, and the boy's body is draped over your own, his head lolling against your neck. He smells like costume paint and silly putty, and there's another scent there, but you can't put your finger on it; it smells kind of sweet actually. You start to wonder why you're even in this position in the first place, but then you recall tripping over your shoelaces and eating it so very unironically.

You're grunting beneath him, trying to shimmy your way out from underneath his body. You really just want to shove at his chest, but you're afraid you'll aggravate his wounds, and of course, you don't want to get any of his weird blood on you. What if it's toxic or diseased or something? You look down at your chest and grimace—so much for trying to evade his blood. There are smears of purple all across the front of your blue slime shirt. It looks like Bob Ross's color pallet just barfed all over you, if that makes any sense.

You finally manage to get him off you and he thuds unceremoniously to the floor. You whisper a quick sorry and awkwardly pat his head, but then you realize what you're doing and you jerk your hand back—that had been purely instinct, you tell yourself.

He's still out like a light, his chest softly heaving up and down, up and down. You heave yourself up from the floor and look up at the staircase looming in front of you, your hands coming to rest at your side. You have absolutely no idea how you're going to lug him all the way up there.

The best place to stash him is in your room. As you said before, your Dad rarely goes up there, and when he does, he only ventures into your room when you're there, and always before knocking first. Besides, if you were to stash the boy anywhere else, you wouldn't be able to keep a close eye on him. You'd feel better knowing he was safe and sound in your room.

Oh man, you're really going to do this aren't you?

You decide that there's no other way to get him up the stairs, so you resort to something that you don't want to do—you're going to have to drag him all the way up there. Carefully, you lean over him and worm your arms underneath his armpits, using all the strength you have in your skinny little limbs to haul him up so that his back is pressed against your chest. He seems much heavier in this position and you try your hardest not to groan in pain when you accidentally nick your chin against one of his spindly horns.

You start off slowly at first because your back is facing the staircase and any wrong move can lead to both of you falling and eating shit as Dave would call it; however, as soon as you get the hang of things, you fasten your pace and it takes you only a second to get to the next step. You watch as his legs and feet thump against the stairs and you grimace each time—that's got to hurt.

Pretty soon, you're both at the top of the stairs. Your lungs are on fire and your arms hurt from having to hold the boy's weight up. You slump against the wall, bringing the boy with you, his body leaning against your chest. You catch yourself sliding down against the wall and you immediately push yourself away, pulling the boy tightly against your chest. You look down the hallway, thanking sweet baby Jesus that you had left your door open. Now you won't have to struggle to get him into your room without feeling as if you'd just run a marathon.

Taking a deep breath, you kick yourself away from the wall, adjusting your grip around the boy's chest. You try your hardest not to squeeze him so much, but you really can't help it. You're not going to set him on the ground and start dragging him by his feet- you have more class than that. As you limp across the hallway, you can hear the floorboards creaking underneath you. When you finally make it to your room, you let out a sigh of relief and hurry your pace, steadily dragging the boy across the threshold.

Your room is blue- the brightest blue. Your dad helped you paint it last fall, and its still there coating your walls, so blue and light, the color of the sky. You don't really know why you even chose that color, but at the time, it had been the only color you could see. Besides the wall color, you're room is pretty ordinary. There's a nice Queen sized bed lodged in the corner of the room, along with a few bedside drawers, a laptop propped on a wooden desk, and a red bean-bag chair sitting in front of a small plasma TV.

You don't want to half-ass this, but the boy's weight is really starting to get to you and your limbs are starting to get really sore, and so, in an imitation of a crab, you practically scuttle your way across your room and gently lay him down on your bed.

You step away from him and place your hands to your hips, your chest heaving. You really need to start exercising more because you're wheezing like you just got out from the gym. You eye the strange inhuman boy sprawled across your blue comforter. His body is half-way off the bed, his legs draped across the floor. His long arms are spread on either side of him, pointed talons turned in towards his palms. You wince.

You find yourself taking a step forward and leaning over him, your fingers hovering over his hands. His claws are sharp and you really don't want him to accidentally nick himself in the palms while he's incapacitated. The least you could do is uncurl his fingers for him. You don't know why you even bother sometimes. Before you even manage to graze his skin, that deep rumbling growl rolls off his chest and you jump where you stand, the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end.

His dark gray eyelids are still closed, yet they're fluttering spasmodically, as if he can't quite get to them to be still. You wonder why he didn't growl at you when you were hauling him all the way up here. Perhaps it depended on the position he was in? Heck, you know you'd be pretty angry if you were lying helpless on your back with a stranger leering over you!

You back away, your eyes still trained on his fingers. You don't want to leave him like that, but there's really nothing you can do about it right now. You have to worry for your safety as well, you tell yourself. What use would you be if you end up getting hurt? You won't be able to help him at all!

You trail your eyes over his frame, crinkling your nose at the sheer amount of cuts and blood decorating his body. You bet that his whole body is stinging right now; however, you're grateful that he's not awake to feel it. He looks sort of uncomfortable in that position though. Maybe you should move him? You want to make him as comfortable as possible, even though you don't know anything about him, or if he's even human for that matter, but there's this wriggling feeling deep inside you that's insists you take action and remedy the situation.

Instead of walking directly towards him, you side-step and circle around your bed, hesitantly pressing your knee down on the mattress. The bed dips and creaks underneath your weight, but not very loudly, so you continue forward. You slowly crawl across the bed, your shoes leaving brown and purple smears across your blue coverlet. Looks like you're going to have to bleach that stuff out.

When you're only but a few centimeters away from him, you stop. You're on your hands and knees, the mattress creaking underneath you whenever you so much as shift your weight from side to side. That sweet scent from before is there again, slowly invading your senses. You're relieved when you can feel cool puffs of air come from his nostrils, indicating that he was still alive and breathing, although very shallowly. He smells like paint and blood and something else, and he's literally leaking purple all over your bed, but he's alive.

You stare down at him, still on your hands and knees, your jittery body hovering over his still one. Your eyes rove over his face, noticing the way his wiry hair is pushed back from his forehead, revealing more gray as rock skin plastered in peeling white paint. His mouth is partially opened, revealing serrated teeth that glint white and green—you wonder what that green stuff on his teeth is, but you're not about to find out right now. Those teeth look sharp enough to pierce through flesh and you're not about to take any chances.

You might as well have jinxed yourself without knocking on any wood, because you suddenly find yourself jerking yourself back as the boy's head lifts up from the mattress and his teeth snap through air. You scramble across your bed backwards, your back thumping harshly against the wall. You're afraid. Your breathing is ragged and your eyes are widened to such a degree that you feel they may as well pop right out of your eye sockets. You fist the blankets beneath you, your heart hammering against your chest. Your cerulean eyes meet grayish purple, and you can't help but feel fear and panic lacing through your veins. He looks a bit disoriented, but then he licks his lips, tilts his head and blinks his eyes so owlishly you think he might go back to sleep.

"Where the motherfuck am I?"


	5. Chapter 5

Your back is pressed against your bedroom wall, your fingers gripping the bed sheets for dear life. It's deathly quiet in your room, save for the sound of your frantic breathing, and the silence is really starting to unnerve you. Your mouth is propped open, but you can't seem to find any words to express how utterly petrified you are right now.

This wasn't a good idea after all.

You should have left him in your backyard and called the police, which would have been the most sensible thing to do. You could have gotten him medical treatment sooner, and by professional's at that. Oh gosh, you think to yourself, shaking your head. How stupid can you be? What made you think you could possibly take care of things by yourself when it's quite obvious you're way in over your head here? You feel utterly guilty for feeling this way, because this boy is clearly in some sort of trouble and you really want to help him, but you're scared.

You're scared because the boy is staring at you with lidded yellow eyes, so eerie and foreign and alien, and you're scared because there is purple blood still dripping from lacerations that streak across his body like smears of paint, soaking through your bed sheets, and you sure hope it doesn't seep into your actual mattress!

You're scared because this boy is not human. Nothing about him is human. He's too gangly and thin and his facial structure is too freakishly sharp, and all that blood is still collecting and forming into small puddles of purple all across your bed. Before long, you find yourself trembling, the back of your head softly thumping against the wall as you try to get your wits together. What would Dave say if he ever saw you sitting here shaking like a leaf? He wouldn't find it ironic at all. You realize you have to pull yourself together; you have to get your head in the game and man it up!

All of your courage escapes you when the boy slouches, and for a second you think he's going to start sobbing because his shoulders are shaking and his head is softly swaying from side to side, but then quite suddenly he leans forward and he's taking a tumble off the bed. He lands on the floor with a harsh thud and you find yourself rocketing across the bed, your fingers finding purchase on the edge of the mattress as you peer over in panic.

"Oh my gosh are you okay?" you call down to him frantically. When he doesn't respond, or even twitch, you scramble off your bed and plant your knees beside his prone form, keeping your distance. Now that he's awake, you'll have to take extra precaution. Getting any closer could be lethal.

He's scrawled across his back on the floor, arms splayed on either side of his head, fingers bunched into weak fists. His eyes are pried wide open, staring listlessly up at the ceiling as if he's found something particularly interesting and can't tear his eyes away. Purple veins frame his eyes like spider webs, branching up his temples and down along the sides of his face. You watch as tiny rivulets of blood dribble down his chin and down the expanse of his neck, where the runny liquid eventually seeps into the collar of his shirt. Speaking of his clothes…

Though his clothes are in a state of distress, you can still make out minute details. His pants are really weird—they're black with gray polka dots dotting the fabric, which is a really strange pattern to begin with and they sort of look like pajama pants on account that they're really loose and thin. His t-shirt is black and resembles something akin to a band tee, but the peculiar purple symbol on the front kind of throws you off. The symbol sort of looks like the letter "n" with a round little bubble sticking out of it. You have a feeling that you should ask Rose about it later on; she always knows everything, she is so smart!

You stiffen when you hear a strange gurgling noise come from his throat. It isn't a growl; it kind of sounds like he's choking…holy crap is he choking?

Instinctively, you shoot your hand out and make to prop his head up, but then the worst happens. Suddenly, your wrist is hurting like a mother and it feels as if a thousand sharp needles are stabbing into your skin. You let out a cry of pain and try to jerk your hand away, but you realize with horror that your wrist is caught between two rows of shark teeth. The boy's teeth sink into your flesh like a knife to bread, and the pain is so concentrated that your eyes begin to water. You're frantically trying to pull your wrist away from his iron-jawed death grip, each jerk of your hand sending the serrated tips of his teeth further into your flesh. Vermilion blood starts to burble from around the boy's fangs and pretty soon you see it dripping down your wrists onto your bedroom floor. Oh God it hurts so badly.

"Ow, ow, ow, let go, let go, let go!" you shout at him, desperately trying to pry yourself away. You're starting to wonder if he even understands English, but then you realize what a stupid thought that was because you heard him speaking English loud and clear before.

Your voice is pitchy and your limbs are starting to go numb because you are that scared. The pain is starting to get to you and all you can do is continue to shout and scream for him to let go, but of course, your pleas go on deaf ears. Though you're grateful he's no longer increasing the pressure, you're really starting to panic now and you're afraid that he might permanently damage something, so with some hesitance and a deep lungful of breath, you rear your other hand back and slap him hard across the face. The resounding slap echoes about your room, shrill and sharp, and your fingers are tingling from the impact. Your hand comes back coated in inky purple ooze.

His teeth immediately leave your skin, a garbled whimper quipping from his throat. You pull your hand back so hard that you fall backwards and land on your bottom, your bleeding wrist pressed protectively to your chest. You scramble a couple of feet away from him, your arm starting to throb with a pain so intense that you have to take a couple of seconds to regulate your breathing. Your buckteeth worry at your bottom lip as you try to blink away the tears. Come on, you have way more mangrit than this!

Fluttering your eyes open, you anchor them back on the boy who has yet to move an inch. He's still lying on the floor with his limbs spread around him, but this time, thank god, his eyes are closed and his chest isn't heaving, but steadily rising and falling. Crap, you hope you didn't smack him too hard!

You sluggishly get up from the floor, wincing a bit when you accidentally put pressure on your punctured wrist. Red perforations run a dotted line along your wrist, and thankfully, they aren't too deep. You flex your hand, grimacing when the inflamed skin stretches and your cuts start to sting. You look back at the boy's motionless form, glad to see that he still seems to be out of it. This is the perfect time to dress your wounds.

Your eyes widen.

"Crap!" you hiss under your breath, hoisting yourself up from the floor. There's purple blood all over your room and even more outside in the hallway, and the stairs, and the kitchen, and oh god, the backyard! How in the world are you going to clean up all this mess before your dad comes home? You realize with dread that you're not going to be able to, it's impossible, although fortunately you do have an advantage here. The boy's blood is an unusual color, and for all you know, your dad is gullible enough to mistake the purple goop for paint or something. Yeah, you can totally do this; you can totally trick your dad! You can tell him you're doing a school project and that you're sorry for staining up the house, but you'll clean it right away! However, there's still one tiny problem. Even though the blood isn't standard human red, it sure smells a lot like blood: bitter, coppery, and harsh. How are you going to mask the scent? You decide you'll worry about that last bit later. Right now, you have to patch yourself up and try to clean as much as the blood as possible.

You softly tip-toe past the comatose body, sighing in relief when he doesn't even flinch when you walk by him. Once you're outside in the hallway, you carefully close the door shut behind you and quickly jog to the hallway bathroom. You shuffle around your medicine cabinet, snagging a box of Transformers Band-Aids and a small bottle of peroxide. You stare at the box of Band-Aids, a frown capturing your lips as hindsight slams into you like a bag of bricks. You don't want the Band-Aid's adhesive sticking to the torn and shredded tissue along your wrist—it'd hurt like a bitch, seriously. You chuck the Band-Aids to the floor and bend down to pull open the white cupboard underneath the sink. When you spot a small roll of medical gauze in the back, new and unraveled, you swipe at it and stand back up.

You've never really tended to your own wounds before, always letting your Dad do it for you while you always just sat and stared wistfully at the world around you. Since you're in a hurry, you don't really care how shoddily you patch yourself up, as long as the cuts are covered. You turn on the faucet and jam your arm underneath it, letting the cold water wash over your wounds. Water streams down your arm and pools at the basin of the sink, the water tinged a rosy pink, and once you've done a good enough job, you turn the faucet off and pat your arm dry with a nearby towel. The towel comes away stained red, but you just shrug and drape it over your shoulder. You'll dispose of it later in your room.

You grab the unstained part of the towel in your hand and bunch it up. You unscrew the brown bottle of peroxide and tilt the bottle on its side as you let the liquid pour onto the towel, effectively soaking it. Once it's damp enough, you quickly press the sodden part of the towel to your injuries, gritting your teeth when fiery shots of pain sprout up your arm. Although you can't exactly see the chemical doing its job, you can feel it, and you guess that you can suffer through a little pain if it's going to clean your cuts up. Once you remove the towel, you pat your arm dry again and rip off a lengthy piece of gauze, wrapping it around your arm hurriedly. You curse at yourself when you realize you completely forgot you need to bind the end of the gauze together or else it'd fall right off. You wonder if your Dad happens to have medical tape lying around the house somewhere, but you quickly brush the thought aside. You don't have time to look right now. You'll have to improvise.

You search for the discarded box of Band-Aids that you had chucked aside previously, your eyes lighting up when you spot it right behind the toilet. You pick it up and nearly rip the top open. You slide out at least four Band-Aids and proceed to rip them open, slapping the sticky beige strips to the gauzed part of your wrist. When you're done, you can't help but shake your head and laugh. Your wrist looks completely ridiculous wrapped in loose gauze and taped together with Transformers Band-Aids, but it'll have to do.

You exit the bathroom and sprint down the hallway, slowing down your gait when you near you room. You gently place your hand on the doorknob and tentatively push it open, allowing yourself to peek inside the room before you completely open the door. When you find the boy still lying in the same spot, you sigh with relief and step over the threshold.

You drag the soiled towel from your shoulder and hurl it across your room, where it lands in an already formed heap of dirty clothes. You scan your room once more, shaking your head at the mess. You'll have to clean up your room last, you think to yourself. The most important parts of the house to clean are the hallway, the stairs, and the kitchen. If you have time, you can get to the backyard, and once done with that, you can start on your room.

You stare at the floor and find your eyes roving over the boy once more. His chest is rising and falling ever so gently, and heated puffs of breath occasionally escape his paint encrusted lips. You're not sure how long he's going to stay like that, but you hope it's long enough for you to cover up the evidence.

You chuckle at that; it sounds like you're trying to cover up a murder.

 

 

 

 

 

You are so glad you don't have carpeted flooring. Cleaning up the bloodied mess down the corridor and the stairs proved to be easy enough. There was nothing a wet rag and a spray bottle of Oxiclean couldn't fix. All that purple mess just wiped right off! Billy Mays was right! You are suddenly struck with sorrow. It's too soon; you can't deal with thinking about Billy Mays right now.

On to more pressing matters…

You are on your hands and knees in the kitchen, spraying parts of the ceramic tiling that are starting to crust over with drying blood. You swipe the stains with an already dirtied rag, once or twice heading over to the sink to rinse the rag out. Before you know it, you're standing by the sliding glass doors leading out into the backyard, looking over the kitchen with a lazy smile on your face. Yes. You are done. You are done cleaning up the most important parts of your house. Now all you need to clean is the backyard, and you don't even need to worry about your room. You can get that done on your own time.

With a sudden rush of energy, you practically skip all the way across your backyard until you halt in front of the fence. You grimace as your eyes trail over the thick, goopy smears of purple splattered across parts of the fence, and when you stare into a muddy puddle of water tinged purple, you feel your insides churn. Even though the blood isn't red and doesn't strike you as gruesome, the smell is still completely overbearing.

You quickly jog over to the hose that is propped against the fence a little ways ahead of you. You unravel it and turn the nozzle, waiting for the water to travel through the hose until it eventually starts spurting from the end. You walk back along the fence, pressing your finger against the hose's end and letting the water jet out across the fence. You watch as the water washes down the barrier, most of the water tinted a very faint purple, eventually getting soaked up by the grass. It takes you at least 10 minutes to hose it down, occasionally spraying the fence with a few spurts of Oxiclean to urge the cleaning process along. There's not much you can do about the blood caked into the mud and grass, so you just briefly hose it down, the blood further dispersing into the mud. It gets so diluted by the water that you can't even tell where the blood is anymore, and you suppose that means you achieved your goal.

The house is spick and span and the backyard is mostly clean, and the tension in your body starts to recede when you realize you can at least relax a bit now. You jog back to your house and enter the kitchen. Immediately, you wrinkle your nose. The cloying scent of bleach and blood, but mostly bleach, fills your nasal cavity. You didn't realize how badly it smelled in here. There's only one solution, and you have to act fast.

You make for the kitchen sink and bend down, opening up the Lazy Suzy. You rotate the cupboard and shuffle your hand through its contents, grabbing the Febreze bottle lodge towards the back. You stare down at it as if it's your darling baby, and as of now, it kind of is. You have never been so glad to see the words Hawaiian Aloha labeled so elegantly across the bottle. Never.

The next couple of minutes are spent frolicking about the household. Why not make it fun? You twirl and pirouette your way through the living room, spraying Febreze throughout every square inch of the house. You're spraying like your life depends on it. You spray in the kitchen, in the living room, in the downstairs bathroom, and even though this is possibly the worst time, you find yourself laughing and giggling. It smells like a beautiful sunny day on the shore of Hawaii and you bite back the urge to whisper a quick "aloha" as you continue to spritz.

It's when you finally make it to the stair case and look up that you halt in your tracks. Your body is literally frozen. Your eyes are the widest they have ever been and your legs feel like jelly, your feet practically glued to the floor. You vaguely register the Febreze falling from your now slack grip, clattering loudly to the floor where it rolls away and rests against the bottom step. You're staring up into the face of insanity itself.

The boy's body looks withered and he can barely even manage to hold himself up, using the banister as support. His shoulders are hunched and his free arm is hanging limp by his side, his clawed fingers occasionally twitching by his thigh.

You gasp and snap your head towards the front door when you hear the telltale sound of your dad's car pull up in the driveway, and oh boy, you're in panic mode now. This is the worst, the absolute worst. Why, why, why did your dad have to come home at this very moment?

You look back up at the top of the staircase, your mouth hanging open like a fish. The boy blinks at you, and it's when you watch his slight frown turn upward into a manic smile, all toothy and jagged and completely terrifying, that your stomach drops.


	6. Chapter 6

All is silent.

You're still staring.

The boy is standing stock-still at the top of the staircase, arms slightly swaying by his side, his head lolling about his shoulders. He looks completely manic, and that terrifying needle-point smile is still stretched wide across his face, so entirely creepy that you feel a shudder wrack through you. In the next instant, his smile vanishes and his eyes cloud over, purple-tinged optics roving all over the place. The engine from your father's car turns off and an empty nothingness wrings shrilly in your ears.

As soon as you hear the jingle of your father's keys as they toggle with the front door, you sprint up the stair case, leaping the steps two at a time, and without even thinking about the repercussions, you snatch the boy's arm and practically drag him down the hallway to your room. He makes this uncanny growling noise at you, vibrations rumbling deep from his throat. Every nerve in your body tells you to let go of him, he's going to bite you or stab you or do whatever brutal things non-humans do, but you ignore the warning pulses. At this moment in time, you're more afraid of your Dad coming in and seeing you two than getting mauled by a boy with claws and fangs.

Once you make it to your room, you all but throw him in and slam the door shut on his face, cursing silently under your breath as you jog down the hallway and notice there are more streaks of purple smeared across the floor of the corridor.

"Dammit!" you mutter, panic starting to cripple your limbs. You almost trip and land on your face but you manage to lean against the wall and prevent yourself from eating shit. You have no time to clean any of this up, so you're going to have to come up with an excuse. Since your Dad already got a glimpse of the blood in the backyard, although he didn't know it was blood at the time, you'll just tell him that you're working on a project for school that involves paint and hope everything falls into place from there. You're sure your dad will believe you; he could be a bit gullible sometimes. Yeah, you can do this. You can totally lie to your dad! You're going to make this happen.

"John!"

You freeze in your place at the top of the staircase, your fingers clenching the banister in a white knuckle grip.

"Come down and help me here, son."

You take a deep breath, steeling yourself, and practically run down the stairs. He can't know. He won't know. You can do this.

 

 

 

The time spent with your dad packing away canisters of frosting and boxes of cake had been shockingly mundane. You two chatted in between putting things away, talking about trivial matters such as school and girls, and although you were rushing yourself, your dad didn't seem to notice anything amiss and merely thanked you when you were done. Before bidding him goodbye however, you explained to your dad that there might be a little bit of a mess upstairs due to a science project you're working on, but that you'll clean it right away. He merely clapped you on the shoulder and asked what kind of cake you wanted for tonight's dessert. You had looked up at him despondently with your mouth agape, before promptly booking it out of the kitchen so fast that you're sure even Dave would be proud. You're happy. You have no reason to feel happy, but you are. Maybe this will work.

 

 

 

You find yourself outside your doorway.

Your arms are pressed tight to your sides and you're standing ramrod straight like a tin soldier, your stomach doing somersaults. You have every right to step inside your bedroom, it's your room for crying out loud, but you're scared. You're petrified. The fact that you have a bite wound on the underside of your wrist is proof enough. Your injury is stinging and throbbing, blood pulsing so hotly through your veins that you clamp your uninjured hand down on the gauze. This does nothing to stop the pain.

The reality of the situation becomes more apparent to you as you hear a slight shuffle come from inside your room, and then silence. You know as soon as you step inside, he could be waiting to pounce and maul you to death. There is absolutely no noise coming from your room now, and thankfully, the door is still shut tight, just how you left it. When you were helping your dad put away groceries, you were rushing so fast to get things done that you had been dropping canisters of frosting all over the place. You shouldn't have left that boy in your room alone like that, no matter if it had only been for a little while. You could have endangered both yourself and your father, and if the boy had escaped, it would have been all your fault if something terrible happened. Thankfully, none of that came into play, so it's really pointless to keep standing here questioning yourself on what could have been.

You shakily press you hand on the doorknob and give it a slight twist, the door opening with a pop. Before stepping inside though, you kick the rest of it open and wait for the rusty cry of the hinges to stop squeaking. The floor of your room is nearly covered with blood, and in the far, far corner sits the boy surrounded in a pile of blankets and pillows.

You hesitantly step inside, your eyes watering instantaneously when the stench of blood hits your nostrils full force. The odor is overwhelming and bitter and nauseating, and you realize you really, really have to tend to his wounds as soon as possible. Forget him being hostile, forget him being strange and alien; he's hurting and you have to save him.

You cross the room slowly, stepping into random puddles of purple goop, the soles of your shoes making sick squelching noises as you smear the blood across the floorboards. You're going to have to do one hell of a cleanup once you're done with him. As you draw closer, you can hear how labored his breathing is, his entire frame undergoing massive convulsions as his chest heaves. His strange violet eyes are open, but heavily lidded, lips drawn in a thin, tapered line. His face is a mess, smeared white, gray, and dark blue-purple, and his hair is as chaotic as his gaunt appearance. You halt about two feet away from him, too afraid to go nearer.

"Hey," you call out gently. It takes some time for him to respond, but eventually he does. He tilts his head up and looks at you through slanted eyes, blood dripping from the gashes across his face and leaking onto chapped lips. You take a step further and hope he doesn't lash out at you. He doesn't even need to open his mouth to release a soft growl. You can hear it thrumming in his throat, low, guttural, and grating, but nothing compared to the growls he gave you earlier.

"I want to help you," you start, taking another step closer. The rumbling in his chest doesn't stop, but he does nothing to keep you from advancing any further. You lick your lips. "I'm not going to hurt you, okay? You're bleeding and it looks like you're hurting pretty badly, so please, I'm not gonna' harm you in any way. Can you understand me?"

You slowly drop down to your knees, your knee caps smearing against the blood on the floor. You grimace, but don't say anything. He's only a foot away from you now, and from this vantage point, you can see him so clearly that it almost hurts to look at him. He looks so gone and messed up, and the sporadic expressions of pain that burst across his face does something weird to your insides.

"If you can understand me, give me your hand," you whisper. You're aware that this is a tender moment for the both of you. If he doesn't have your trust, then you won't be able to help him as much as you want to. You have to get him to trust you. Handshakes are universal right? You hope they are.

For a while, your hand hangs in the air, sad and alone, and you have the slightest hunch that he might not take it, but then, he lets out a soft grunt and twitches his hand. You trust your instincts and carefully worm your hand towards his, grasping it firmly in your palm. His hand is clammy and cold and there are streaks of purple along his fingers, sharp talons coated in neon green, but your hand is warm and you hope he can feel it. You hope he can see and feel how badly you're concerned for his welfare, even if you don't know him at all, and when you both lock gazes, his eyes stir and instantly you know. You're surprised to see a lazy smile cling to his lips, so much gentler than the manic one he had given you previously. It's as if he's an entirely different person, and strangely enough, that thought doesn't sit well with you.

"Can I clean you up?" you ask tentatively. He merely blinks owlishly at you, resting his chin on his chest, the rest of his body splayed out around the blankets. Your bunched-up comforter is stained purple, or is it indigo? You really can't tell. You're not an art whiz. You're surprised when he actually nods at you. It's more of a slight tilt of the head than anything, but to you, it means so much more.

"Okay, okay," you mumble to yourself, releasing his hand. You lean back and rest on your haunches, looking to the ground as your mind scrambles around for a plan. "I'm gonna' need towels. Lots and lots of towels." You nearly jump and fall backwards when the boy lets out a brief, sharp laugh.

"Motherfuckin' towels man," he wheezes, and you're staring at him, your mouth agape, because this is the first time he has spoken to you since you first brought him to your room. You still can't believe that he can speak this much at all. His voice is deep and limber, a bit on the throaty side, and despite the baritone, for some reason you can't help but shake the idea that he speaks listlessly, almost as if he's high. He certainly looks like it anyway.

"Yeah, towels," you laugh with him. When you meet eyes again, you instantly clam up. He's not laughing anymore, just staring at you unblinkingly as if his eyes are stuck on you. His smile is completely gone, no remnants of the previous grin left on his face. You can't help but feel ridiculous and turn away. This is getting awkward. You push your thoughts aside and sit up straight. You have no time to feel nervous right now. You have a job to do.

"My name's John," you blurt out, staring at him with wide eyes behind your glasses. You wonder why you haven't thought about exchanging names with him before. This is sort of a critical thing to know.

The boy is still lying on his back, gazing up at you through wiry bangs. Boy, does he look completely out of it. The only time you've ever seen someone looking this inattentive was when you ventured into the bowels of the 400 building and took a piss while two people toked it up in the far corner of the bathroom. The marijuana smell clung to your sweater for the rest of the day.

"Jaawn."

You flinch, but when you realize he's only trying to pronounce your name, you let a smile capture your lips. You nod your head enthusiastically. "John!"

"Jaaawn," the boy flicks his tongue at you when he puts extra emphasis on the "n" in your name. His voice sounds really strained, as if he has a sore throat. You put your hands up and tell him to take it easy, but he doesn't pay you any mind. He keeps on repeating your name like a mantra, chuckling once or twice when he gets tongue-tied and ends up pronouncing your name like "Joan". All you can do is watch him as he says your name repeatedly under his breath, his eyes staring at nothing in particular. His gaze looks glazed over and you're starting to get a bit creeped out by it. He gets progressively better at saying your name, whispering it like some kind of whimsical chant. You can barely hear him now. Really, this is sort of freaking you out now.

He only stops when a glob of blood leaks from the gashes along his face and enters his mouth, causing him to jerk forward as he coughs and sputters, sprinkling purple spittle and blood on the floor. You rush over to him and hesitantly put your hands on his shoulders, gently patting him on the back. He doesn't growl at you this time. He lets you softly lower him to the surrounding blankets until he's bordered by fluff and fabric. His coughing attack quiets down until only a gentle hum from his throat can be heard. It's a weird sound. It's not a growl or a guttural vibration. The hum seems to encase your very being. You can hear it right next to your ears and you can feel it thrumming along your skin. For a second, you believe you can almost feel it in your own throat, but it stops when you heave yourself up and stand up straight before him. He regards you silently from his pile, eyes trained to your form as you shuffle from side to side.

"Alright, I'm going to go get some supplies, okay?" you ask one more time, your fingers fidgeting at your sides. You have to make sure he understands what you're doing. You don't want him lashing out at you. "Or…do you want someone else to take care of you? I can make a call." Inside, you hope he rejects that suggestion. You just know that the police would have a field day with him. You know this boy isn't human—who in the world has purple blood for crying out loud? You can only image what they might do to him. They might take him away to some facility in the middle of nowhere and perform experiments on him while he's strapped to an operating table. The image makes your insides twist and turn—that's completely sick. However, if his condition turns out worse than deep cuts and gashes and runs much deeper, you have no choice but to seek professional medical help. There is only so much a 15 year old boy can do. You really hope it doesn't come to that.

He shakes his head, and you feel yourself light up inside. His care is in your hands now.

"Stay here," you tell him, swiveling around. When you're nearly out the door, you halt and turn around again. "Oh! I didn't get your name, sorry. What is it?"

There's a moment of silence that leaves the room completely quiet. It's not a really awkward silence, but it is kind of unsettling. And then finally, he answers.

"Gamzee."


	7. Chapter 7

 

“Gamzee, Gamzee, Gamzee,” you mutter his name repeatedly under your breath, your eyes glued to the floor of your hallway. His name is…peculiar. It sounds completely foreign on your tongue as you toss it around in your mouth. For some reason it reminds you of the word “gas” and you can’t help the burble of laughter that hisses through your teeth.  You’ve never heard anything quite like his name; it makes you want to jot it down on your now official “Ask Rose Later List”. She would so definitely know something about it.  Did you ever mention how smart she is? Or perhaps you should ask Jade? She usually comes up with strange theories and scenarios, and predictions! You can’t forget about those! Man, she was such an awesome girl too. You’re lucky to have such righteous friends!

And now, on to the task at hand.

 You have a stack of towels folded underneath your left arm, while you hold a shoebox filled with Neosporin, Band-Aids, Aspirin, gauze, cotton balls, peroxide, small raggedy washcloths, and a pair of scissors in the other. You realize you should feel a bit weary walking down the corridor with a bunch of medical supplies, but you know you don’t have to worry about your dad catching you—you can already smell him cooking (and baking) up a storm downstairs. Since it’s still lunch time, he’s probably whipping up something light, and by the smell of it, you’re probably going to eat homemade cheeseburgers and **Betty Crocker patented cupcakes**. You nearly vomit in your mouth.

When you make it to your bedroom, you gently nudge the door open and tip-toe inside, closing it softly behind you.

“Gamzee?” you quietly call out. Wow, it feels so strange to say his name. You actually have a name to call him by instead of just “boy”. You wait at the threshold of the doorway, waiting for a response.  A muffled “mm” is all you get before you step inside and close the door shut behind you.

The hairs on your arms prickle and stand up on end. It’s cold in your room and it smells like blood and something bittersweet and acrid. You’ll have to make sure you remind yourself to thoroughly Febreze the shit out of your room.

You’re struggling with your supplies; the towels are starting to slip from their neatly folded stack underneath your arm and the box of medical provisions is starting to slip from your grip. You pick up your head and look across the room. Gamzee is still buried in his pile of blankets and pillows; however, now, he’s added a few more things into the mix. There are random knick-knacks and objects in his self-made pile. DVD cases and bits of paper are entwined in the blankets, and if you’re not mistaken, your digital alarm clock and your laptop charger are in there as well. What the—okay, you understand the blankets and pillows, but the other stuff? Those things don’t even make sense! Is he even comfortable like that?

“I brought some stuff to help with your cuts!” you pipe up, hastily closing the distance between you two. You plop down on the floor on your knees, throwing the towels beside you and placing the shoebox in front of you. Gamzee lifts his head from the pile, eyeing you lazily, claws kneading the comforter like a cat. He makes no move to talk to you, nor does he get up, however he is staring at the box of medical supplies as if it’s something foreign and strange. You hope he doesn’t snap and lash out at you. You don’t really know with him; he’s quite unpredictable, but you’re starting to notice a pattern. Sometimes he’s calm like he is now, and sometimes he looks deranged and unbalanced, as if he’s an entirely different person. That scares you most of all, but you can’t really do anything about it right now. You have to hurry up and tend to his injuries!

You grab a fresh towel and lay it on your lap, and then you flick open the medical kit and get out Peroxide and a bunch of cotton balls. You’re not a doctor and you don’t really know what you’re doing, but you have the basics down. You need to wipe the blood away with the towels, clean the cuts, and patch him up to the best of your ability. You can do this!

“Hey, can ya’ maybe sit up a little?” you ask him meekly. You almost let out a laugh when Gamzee cocks an eyebrow at you. He sinks in further into his pile. “Hey! Come on! I need to patch you up dude.” He doesn’t listen to you. He shifts around in the blankets, causing a DVD case to topple onto his chest. He lets out a small trill of pain, but doesn’t do anything more than that.

“Well don’t you look cozy,” you mumble, furrowing your brow. You sit up straight. “But seriously, Gamzee, I need to clean you up.” You muster up your best poker-face look, narrowing your eyes and setting your mouth into a thin, straight line. He peeks out at you from the shelter of his pile, violet-tinged eyes lidded and glazed. If you weren’t so anxious to get him treated, you would say that he looked almost kind of endearing like that, all snuggled in his pile of blankets and sharp objects, but you don’t have time to think of trivial things like that. While you’re just sitting there thinking of the different ways he could possibly position his body to make himself look even more endearing, he’s bleeding all over your bedding. In a fit of exasperation, you hold out your hand and leave it hanging there.

Gamzee eyes your appendage cagily, and you’re afraid he’s not going to listen to you and remain in that pile of his, but he surprises you by letting out a gravelly chuckle, lunging forward with a lazy grin across his face. The blankets fall around him like a flurry of fluff, and the DVDs clatter to the floor and skid underneath your bed. You look at his face, which is streaked with purple and white and bits of green and you wonder how he can smile so easily when it’s obvious he’s in so much pain.

“Are you going to let me clean your cuts?” you ask him deliberately, palming the towel in your lap. He eyes the towel for a second, and then anchors his eyes back on you, staring at you unblinkingly. His smile widens.

“Sure thing motherfucker, get your help on little bro,” he breathes, and he sits up ram-rod straight, his chin tilted upwards and his arms limp at his sides. You’re tongue tied. All you can do is stare. He tilts his head. “You gonna’ put that fucking miracle towel to work Johnbro? Lay it on me little man.”

You stare at him with your mouth open. He raises an eyebrow, smiling a toothy smile. Holy crap, he talks so….so… **weird,** and so much!  You’ve never heard anyone talk like that before. It’s a sort of fast and loose form of speech, yet at the same time it’s lazy and sluggish. If hippies and the ghetto managed to marry and become one, you’d bet they’d sound just like Gamzee. So wait, he’s a non-human ghetto hippie? That’s stupid. You sound ridiculous.

“Okay, I’m just gonna’…towel off the blood first. Is that alright?” you ask tentatively. Gamzee simply nods at you. With a shaky breath, you pluck the towel form your lap and gesture for him to hold out his arms. He holds them aloft, and you grimace. There are scratches and cuts adorning the length of his chalky gray arms, ranging from shallow to deep, and it looks as if his arms had gone through a cheese grater. You hold up the towel, locking your eyes on his.

“This is probably going to sting,” you say to him, worrying at your bottom lip. Oh man, you’re nervous yourself and you’re not even the one in pain here!

“S’all good Johnbro,” he slurs, and you watch as his body relaxes and his eyes gloss over, and Jesus Christ, talk about a complete 360. He looks so out of it now that you’re starting to think he’s going under some kind of epilepsy attack, even though you don’t know what epilepsy attacks look like. Or maybe that’s some sort of defense mechanism he has going for him? You really don’t know.

Gulping, you gently place the towel over his arms and apply minimal amount of pressure, watching as the blood soaks through the white fluffy cotton, and it only takes a half second for him to let out a yelp of pain.

“Ffffuuuuck,” he says through a throaty growl, snatching his arms away. He presses them against his chest, a soft hum thrumming from his throat. He snaps his head up and fixes you with a furious glare. “That motherfuckin’ HURT.”

You almost let out a gasp. You flinch away from him, throwing the soiled towel to the side. Okay, okay, that was really strange, and sort of frightening. Did his voice just fluctuate? You sure hope your Dad didn’t hear that-- it had been **that loud**. Gamzee is still fixing you with a heady glare, sharp pointy teeth piercing through his bottom lip. Does he realize he’s hurting himself right now?

“Sorry, sorry!” you mutter under your breath, throwing your hands up in front of you. That had been a really stupid idea. Even though towels were soft looking, they were also pretty rough, and you realize he only cried out in pain because the towel must have dragged across his cuts. And even then, the towel wasn’t 100 percent effective in getting ALL the blood off. The only way you would be able to do that, and clean him at the same time, was to…take him a bath! Crap, why didn’t you think of that before? That would have been so much easier and much more relaxing than dragging a towel over his open wounds.

“You okay?” you ask softly, still maintaining a relatively safe distance away from him. Your body is still on edge and you’re waiting for him to do something other than glare and stare at you. You really don’t like being on the receiving end of that glower. “I thought up of something better than towels!” You laugh a bit at that, hoping to relieve some of the tension in the room, but it does nothing to alleviate the strained atmosphere. He’s still glaring at you.

“Oh, and what the MOTHERFUCK WOULD THAT BE?” he rumbles loudly, looking up at you through wiry bangs.

“Hey, hey, shhh! Keep your voice down,” you whisper frantically to him. You’re starting to panic now. Gamzee looks terrifyingly feral, maybe even a little pissed, and there’s something deep inside you that’s telling you he’s going to reach out and bite you, or stab you, or pierce you with those wickedly sharp horns of his. He’s bitten you before. He could do it again. Your eyes are wide open and you’re leaning back on trembling arms—your whole body is shaking. You heave yourself up and quickly tread backwards, accidentally stepping on a DVD case. The loud crack reverberates across the room, ringing shrilly in your ears.

“You’re scaring me,” you hear yourself say and you fight the urge to smack yourself. Your mouth runs away from you sometimes, as Dave often says, and right now is one of those times. If only you could zipper your mouth shut. You swallow a wad of spit and lick your lips. “Forget what I just said…anyway! I thought maybe we could take you a bath and a shower instead?”

There is silence in the room. All you can hear is Gamzee’s erratic breaths and his strained wheezing, and as the seconds tick away, so does the tension. The atmosphere isn’t as stifling, and when you look back at Gamzee, he’s no longer staring at you. Instead, he’s looking down at his injuries, inspecting them. You watch as a gray colored tongue pokes out and licks along the black seam of his lips. Black lipstick is soooo gaudy. Maybe you’ll wash that off too.

“Fuck man, what the motherfuck is a shower?”

A wave of relief washes over you. Gamzee’s voice isn’t elevated, and he seems a little bit calmer. He’s no longer glaring at you, which is a good thing. That’s always a good thing.

“Shit sounds nice,” Gamzee says through a smile. “Showwwwerrrr, haha, fuck, what kind of motherfucking miracle word is that?” And now he’s repeating it like he did your name, whispering it fast and slow under his breath in that weird speech-dialect he has. You are left completely dumbfounded. How could he not know what a shower was! Holy crap, can this boy get any stranger.

“You’re okay then?” you ask again, a small smile worming across your face. You can’t describe how relieved you’re feeling right now.

“Fucking fiiiiine,” he drawls out, bobbing his head as if he’s listening to a beat-heavy song. “Mind helping a motherfucker out?” He gestures to all of himself.

“Oh! Yeah!” you eagerly shake your head. How could you be so rude? You quickly pad your way over to him and halt a foot away, holding out your arms. “Grab on.”

His clammy hands wrap around your forearm, and you try not to notice the way his claws brush across your skin, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to _feel_ it. You count to three in your head, and with your efforts combined, you manage to haul him up from the pile of blankets and stand him upright. You take a step back and gawk at him.

Wow.

You knew he was tall, but you didn’t realize just how much taller he was than you. It was probably because he had been hunched over all the time. You couldn’t blame him. You wouldn’t want to hurt yourself by stretching out your wounds either.

You stare up at Gamzee with wide blue eyes, your mouth propped open. You know you’re completely gawking by this point, but you don’t care. He’s just so tall! He’s easily a little over six feet, maybe 6”4, and compared to your measly 5”6, he’s like a skyscraper. He stands unsteadily next to you, his frame willowy and gawky. He looks down at you and smiles, blinking his eyes lethargically.

“Haha, you’re as short as he is,” he snorts through his nose, tiredly holding his hand horizontally over your head. He makes a swiping motion over you. “S’not a bad thing though, motherfucker, everything’s fucking fine in my book.” He then softly pats your head twice, before he lets his hand drop and it resumes its place at his side.

“I’m not that short!” you scoff, stepping around him. You bend down and pick up two towels and the shoebox, putting the peroxide and cotton balls back inside.

“Hey, are you sick?”

“What?” you quip.

“Your skin is all peachy,” he drawls listlessly, swaying where he stands. “Never seen shit like that. Fuckin’ miracles working all up in this bitch.”

“I could say the same thing about you!” you laugh at him, standing by his side. “You want me to help you walk?”

“That’d be fucking nice of you Johnbro, way fuckin’ nice,” he says. He hobbles towards you and snakes his arm around your neck, and you go stock-still. You didn’t think he’d be the first to initiate contact like that, but then again, Gamzee likes to fluctuate. Maybe he’s starting to trust you now.

“Where are we going?” he asks slowly. He looks down at you with a passive face.

“To the bathroom,” you respond quickly, stepping out the door. He shrugs, most likely because he has absolutely no fucking idea what a bathroom is, and he’s about to mimic your actions, but you hover your hand above his chest, sneaking glances down the corridor. You can hear your dad humming a tune downstairs—the coast is clear.

“Okay, we’re gonna’ go a little fast here,” you start to explain. “Sorry in advance.” Gamzee merely grunts at you, staring off at the opposite wall of the hallway. “Let’s go then!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You don’t know where the fuck you are, but it’s hot and steamy and it kind of feels motherfucking nice, and you want to be able to enjoy yourself, because even though your cuts are stinging, your muscles feel lax and limber, but you can’t focus. You can’t focus because…because what? What were you talking about again? Man, this water feels like a fucking miracle, you know that much. It’s kind of just pooling around you, the water dyed the color of your blood, and it’s nice and hot and soothing. You look down and find that, woah, where the fuck did your shirt go? And your motherfucking pants? Fuck, you hoped you didn’t leave them somewhere like that last time when you were at the beach waiting for your lusus and he found you sitting there in nothing but your undershorts staring off into the ocean. That had been a pretty choice moment. You don’t remember if you were embarrassed or not. You promised him you would make sure you knew where your clothing was at all times. Looks like you up and forgot that shit again!

You squint your eyes and stare straight ahead, eyes roving over colored bottles and white foamy bricks. They kind of look like the cleansing bricks you find in ablution traps, and then you realize you’re in one! What the fuck! You didn’t know this alien planet would have ablution traps here, sweet. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad place after all. They could have stranded you somewhere way more fucking horrible than this. You then wonder if this squishy pink species likes pie. If they do, you’re going to have to make sure your stash pile is still safe and…stashed. You want to be able to up and bake for everyone right, especially for that little motherfucker, the one who’s helping you and shit. He seems like the kind of guy that could go for a nice slice of pie.

In the background, you can hear muffled whimpers of pain, soft and low, and you try to grasp and process them, but your brain is letting everything slip through. Where the motherfuck are those sounds coming from?

You turn your head and find that there’s some kind of yellow privacy enclosure bunched up next to you, blocking your view. You raise your hand, mesmerized by the way the water drips from your arm and plops down into the ablution trap. It’s so fucking beautiful the way the water ripples and swells around your body. With a flick of your wrist, you swipe the privacy enclosure aside and yours eyes widen, because _that boy_ is sprawled on the fucking floor holding a hand to the side of his face, red liquid teeming between his fingers.  His blue ocular sponges are wide and quivering and he looks like he’s just seen an ectobeast, and he’s staring right at you and you don’t know what the fuck happened.

There’s something inside you that hisses out a venomous “gutterblood”, but you shake the voice away.

Maybe you’re feeling just a little too relaxed, because when you try to say his name, all that comes out of your windhole is a few warbles and growls. Haha, fuck, that sounded sort of tight. You try it again, but it only manages to get John (yeah, that’s his name) to hunch in on himself. You snap your mouth shut and stare at him.

Fuck, you just know you did something wrong, but you can’t remember.

 

 

 

 

 

Your name is John Egbert and you’re currently bleeding to death on your bathroom floor. Okay, maybe you’re exaggerating a bit, but it sure feels like it.

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	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, the next chapter after this one is already posted on ff.net, but i won't be posting it here until later. You can read it over there if ya want. :D

  
  
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You're sitting on the closed seat of your toilet, the box of medical supplies nestled snuggly in your lap. Your fingers tap along the worn, dented edges of the shoe-box, the pads of your fingers dragging against the smooth surface. You wince when your nails accidentally scrape against the cardboard.

Truthfully, you don't know what to do with yourself. The bathroom is quiet, eerily quiet. Gamzee is standing before the sink, his thin frame leaning over the counter. He blinks at the reflection staring back at him in the mirror, slitting his eyes as he takes in his decrepit looking appearance. His brow furrows and his sharp teeth worry at his lips, his head tilting to the side as he begins to sway where he stands. He then deliberately raises his right hand and gently prods at one of the long gashes that streak across his face, causing him to hiss in pain.

"Fuck, I look motherfuckin' scary brother," you hear him slur to himself as he licks his lips free from any leftover blood. He grimaces. That probably stung a lot.

"That's why we're gonna get you cleaned up!" you let out a laugh as you stand up, setting the medical supplies on the toilet. "So you wanna take a bath now?"

He turns towards you and blinks, an expression of confusion flitting across his face. "What's a bath?"

You nearly splutter. Okay, this little prank of his was getting kind of out of hand. You hope he's joking. You merely let out a chaste laugh and shake your head. "Whatever man."

You get up from the toilet and head to the tub, pushing aside the yellow shower curtain and busying yourself with getting a fast stream of hot water underway. The water sloshes against the bottom surface of the tub and laps against the ceramic sides. You thrust your fingers into the jet stream, adjusting the temperature as necessary until the heat is just right. You back away from the tub and turn around, taking a seat on the edge. You stare across at Gamzee who's still looking at himself in the mirror as he cards his fingers through the wiry mess of his hair. His claws come back stained purple.

"Fuck," he stares down at his digits, rubbing his bloody fingertips together. You chuckle under your breath. He looks reminiscent of an Italian stereotype. You then realize your complete failure in masking your laughter, because when you focus your attention on Gamzee again, you find that he's staring at you. You straighten yourself and begin tapping your foot nervously against the floor.

"So…" you speak up, your voice trailing away. You avert your eyes to the ground, eyes following the dark brown grout lines running in between the marble tiles. The rumbling sound of the tub water serves as white noise in the background. The steam from the water begins to billow from the surface, coiling pleasantly along your back, warm and balmy like a sauna, even though you've never actually been in one before. You suppose your gym's shower room is as close to a sauna experience as you're ever going to get. Despite the enveloping warmth, you shiver.

"You…what are you?" You immediately shut your mouth, realizing the absurdity of your question. Great, now he's going to think you're one incredibly rude kid with no sense of personal boundaries. Just fantastic. Oh well, no sense in beating yourself up, it's not like you can turn back time and stop yourself from being incredibly stupid, although that would be pretty awesome in retrospect. You guess you'll just have to sit here and hope he decides to overlook your foolishness and answer your question anyway.

Gamzee shuffles his body around until he's completely facing you, the left side of his hip leaning against the sink counter. You really can't get around the way he carries himself, all slouched and lazy, languid even, but you can pretty much say that about his entire existence. His speech, his appearance and the way he smiles—it's actually sort of creepy, now that you think about it, but it all has this idle feel to it. He looks like a clown on crack. A lazy grin slowly crawls across his face, serrated teeth poking out from the barrier of his lips.

"I think I should be asking _you_ that question, motherfucker," he drawls out nice and slow, like he's taking his time.

"But…" you say quietly. You close your eyes and sigh. As you thought, this is stupid. This isn't a sci-fi movie, you're not going to get anywhere by asking something that makes no sense at all. How could you have even assumed he wasn't human to begin with? What in the world made you jump on the alien-bandwagon so quickly? Yeah, his blood color is a little odd and his horns look a bit threatening, but maybe he has a condition or something? That's certainly possible. It's like when you venture into the weird part of YouTube and end up watching all those medical anomalies in the suggestions' box. Some of them seem so unreal, but most of them are actually rare and unfortunate medical conditions. If someone can cry red colored tears, then you're pretty sure purple blood is not very far off the mark.

You flash Gamzee a quick smile while you twist around and turn off the water. The tub is filled up at least ¾ of the way and looks very, very tempting.

"Bath's ready," you say to him as you heave yourself up and take a seat on the closed toilet lid. For a second, he just continues to stand where he is, looking from the tub, then back at you, and then back to the tub, and finally back at you. A light bulb suddenly flashes across your brain—privacy! You get up in a flurry and say rather quickly, "Shit, I'm sorry. I mean, I was just thinking that maybe you couldn't bathe yourself on account of your injuries, and I don't really want to leave you alone, because what if something bad happens- ."

"Nah, you can all up and stay little man, don't bother me none," Gamzee interjects. He squints his eyes and looks at the bathtub, then points at it. "That fuckin' thing with the water is a bath right?"

"It's a bathtub, but yeah…wait, how can you not know this?" you stare astounded at him. He's doing it again. He's making you think he's not from this world at all. Oh god, what if he isn't? No! Stupid! If you weren't into all this paranormal stuff, maybe your brain would have dropped the subject already. This train of thought is now completely restricted from entering your brain!

"On my planet, we call them ablution traps."

Okay, screw the restriction, what in the actual… You were expecting him to say something along the lines of "in my country", but now he's thrown you a curve ball.

"What?" you almost yell out, causing Gamzee to flinch.

"What," he repeats, his shoulders slouching.

"Wait, wait, wait," you say rather quickly, staring down at your hands, because staring at Gamzee right now is not something you want to do. Your thoughts are racing. "Did you just say you…are you? What's happening?"

He blinks his eyes at you and tilts his head, picking at his teeth with pointed nails. "You ok?" he asks with a mouth full of grubby fingers.

"You just said 'my planet', which I assume means that you're not _from_ this one!" you say a little louder. Holy crap, you can hazard a guess that you're about to get hysterical in a few minutes. This is just…you don't even know.

"Mmhm, sounds 'bout right," Gamzee nods his head. He takes his fingers out of his mouth and begins to lick them clean, but now the runny purple goop is smeared all around his mouth and that's… that's a little gross, you have to admit. You take a step closer towards him. Your legs are beginning to ache in what you can only assume is adrenaline. You can practically feel your heart beating madly in your chest like a beating drum.

"So this isn't all costume makeup?" you gesture at him. "Those are real?" You point at his horns. He nods. "And those?" His eyes and teeth. He nods again. "And…those?" His claws. He raises his arm and wriggles his fingers at you. "You're an alien?" He looks at you for a split second, eyes narrowed and thin as he squints them, but then gives a curt nod.

"I feel like little Red Riding Hood," you mutter to yourself, your eyes growing wide.

"What?"

"I mean, I always assumed that you were maybe not from Earth or something, but then that's stupid right? Aliens don't exist, that only happens in movies and books and stuff, it's simply retarded to even come to that conclusion, but now, I don't even know what to think. You could be lying, but it all fits! Your weird blood color and those things on your head!" You stare up at his towering form, and you suddenly realize just how short you are compared to him. You're weak. Assuming he's a legit alien from outer space, your frail human body just can't compete. You don't have incredibly sharp horns that look like they could pierce through anything they come in contact with; you don't have Piranha teeth or wicked looked talons that can tear through even the toughest of flesh. Why are you so blunt and nubby?

"I can't believe this," you say quietly to him, a strange sort of seriousness taking over you. He merely stares at you and shrugs his shoulders.

"Whatever man," he says with a light smile. "I'm all gonna' get in that motherfuckin miracle water over there. Feelin kinda weird."

"O-oh! Yeah! Yeah," you agree with him. All this time you were having an inner war with yourself and here he was hurting and leaking blood like a faucet. How insensitive of you.

You entire body feels numb as you guide him towards the tub and stand beside him, looking down into the clear water. This is a lot to take in, even though you still can't make any sense of all this new information. Your mind can't process anything right now.

"You need help?" you offer.

"m'fine," he grunts as he begins to tug his shirt off. So even male aliens take off their shirts the same way human males do, assuming he's an alien of course. He could be pulling your leg, you can't tell with him, but then again, there's something that's telling you he's not fibbing. You don't sense any sort of deceit coming from him, it's quite the opposite in fact.

You can't help but watch as he slowly guides his shirt over his head, and finally, over his horns. The skin underneath the shirt is as grey as his face and limbs. Despite how lanky and thin he looks, he actually has some muscle tone on his body. His shoulders are broad and his stomach is lean, and the tough grey skin that's _not_ littered with bruises and cuts looks eerily smooth, almost like the surface of a flat stone or pebble. You don't bother looking at him when he gets to his pants. You swiftly turn around and stare at the bathroom wall.

You hear the shuffle of his clothing as it hits the ground. You wait a few moments more until you feel it's safe enough to ask, "You need any help?" The sound of him lowering himself into the water is your cue to turn back around. He lets out a small hiss of pain when he manages to finally sit down, fangs clenched in agony as the hot water washes over his open wounds. The water comes up to mid-torso and the liquid around him is already turning a light violet because of his blood. He wades in the water, all still and silent, the steam rising all around him and flushing his skin a faint dark purple. You can't see through the water anymore, which is a good thing! You don't want to be looking at any alien bits, right?

You shuffle your way over to the tub and grab a towel, unfolding it along the floor. You take a seat and lean against the rim of the bathtub, the end of your shirt sleeve beginning to dampen.

"Are you sure you're not lying?" you begin, your voice echoing about the bathroom. He slightly pivots his head and grins tiredly at you.

"I fuckin' swear," he says with the most blissed out voice imaginable while giving you a half-assed salute. You shirk away from him. He must be really enjoying that bath now. His eyes are heavily lidded and his cheeks are flushed purple, or from what you can tell anyway. He still hasn't cleaned his face yet. Besides that, you're glad he no longer seems to be in pain.

"Hey, aren't you going to clean yourself with soap or something?" you ask him. Though most of the blood is washed away from his lower body, his upper still has a lot of open wounds that need rinsing. He looks a right mess and all you want to do is grab a cup and splash him with some water, or disinfectant.

"It fuckin hurts to move," he says with a gruff voice. He shifts about in the water until you see the tip of his knee poking out from the surface. He mutters a quiet, "and what the fuck is soap."

"Oh," you merely say. You smile, all protruding buckteeth and pink gums. "I can help then!"

"That'd be way fuckin nice of you bro, way fuckin nice," he responds, giving you an appreciative wink in thanks. You quickly get up from the floor and trudge your way over to the sink. You know there's an old plastic Pokémon cup below the sink from when your Dad used to wash your hair when you were a little tyke. You grab it and then head back towards the tub, taking a seat again.

"You might wanna' tilt your head back," you warn him, scooping up a cup of purple tinged water. He heeds your warning and tilts his head back as far as he can go without losing balance and falling backwards. You tilt the cup and watch as the water pours down onto his head, quickly soaking through the dense black curls that coil about his face like stringy snakes. Even more blood washes down from his scalp, little streams of purple trialing down his body until it merges with the water. You repeat this motion until his head is thoroughly soaked and most of his upper torso is clean. You realize that his face is going to need a very thorough scrubbing, but you're a bit wary of those teeth. After all, he did bite you earlier. You're going to have to change your own bandages right after you get him cleaned up.

"Do you mind?" you ask him, silently asking permission to touch his person. You'll wait to scrub his face later; right now you need to shampoo his hair. Is it even safe for aliens to use shampoo anyway? Your mind shouts at you, _stop jumping to ridiculous conclusions! He's probably not even an alien akfjslfjsdkds!_

Gamzee looks at you from his peripheral. "You can all up and do whatever the fuck you want, just don't mess with the horns."

You blink at him. "Aww man, why? They're so cool looking! Can't I just feel them for a second, real quick?"

"Nah," he quips, looking away from you.

"It'll convince me you're an alien if you let me touch 'em," you plead with him, zeroing in on his horns. Close up, you see that his horns are actually very textured and porous, and also lethally sharp. They're about an inch and a half thick and are tapered into a fine needle point at the top. They really do look like candy corn! What a strange color for horns. He also doesn't seem to be wearing any headband of some sort, like most costume horns would have. Maybe he _is_ telling the truth.

"No can do," he sing-songs, flicking the surface of the water with a clawed finger. You frown at him.

"Whatever, I'm gonna' shampoo your hair now okay," you tell him, slightly disappointed. You reach for a bottle of Head and Shoulders and quickly uncap the small lid. You pour a very generous amount into the palm of your hand and try to keep the substance from spilling over. "Head back please." He tilts his head backwards, strands of wet hair clinging to his forehead. You look at him nervously. "You're not gonna' bite me again, right? I'm still gonna' have all ten fingers by the end of this?"

He doesn't respond to this, so, throwing all caution to the wind, you use your free hand to gently reach over and brush Gamzee's hair back so that none of it is in his face, and then, with your other hand, you softly palm the shampoo onto his head, ever mindful of his horns. His hair feels incredibly thick, even when damp. Your finger nails keep on snagging at his hair, which in turn makes you extremely nervous because you don't want to surprise him with pain—he's already had enough of that for today and you're not quite sure how he'll react this time. For all you know, he might maul your whole hand off. You work the shampoo into a light and foamy lather, white bubbles quickly dominating the majority of his hair. You lightly scratch at his scalp, your fingers flaking away with bits of purple wedged underneath your blunt nails. You grimace down at him, but his eyes are closed so he doesn't catch your glower.

You continue scrubbing at his scalp, massaging wayward strands of hair covered in blood and oil and caked on mud. It's when you brush against something hidden within the depths of his hair, that you pull your hands away. It kind of felt like ear cartilage, but the shape is all wrong!

"Dude," you mumble to yourself and part a particularly dense patch of hair, revealing a grey ear that looks like…well… "Are you an elf?"

"The fuck is that?" he asks drearily.

"Your ear is pointed!" you tell him excitedly, tucking away another strand of curly black hair, and sure enough, his ear is indeed pointed. It's at least two inches longer than your own ear, but instead of having a rounded curve, his ear is tapered into a smoothed point like an elf's. "Don't tell me you live on planet Middle Earth. Oh man, that would be so fucking awesome. Can you walk into Mordor there?"

"What in the motherfuck are all these magical words you're speakin', brother?" he questions you as he cracks one eye open.

"Hey," you whisper at him, completely disregarding his question. You lean in towards him, eyes alight with curiosity. "Can I touch them?"

"Get your feel on little man," he says with a shrug, closing his eyes once more. You were kind of expecting a little more reluctance on his part, but you guess maybe his ears aren't as important as his horns, or however that works. You eagerly get your fingers near his hair again, brushing away wet strands as you gently place your thumb and forefinger at the very tip of his ear. The flesh there is a little rougher than a human's ear. You then firmly tug at his ear, and when it doesn't pull away or fall off and remains in place just like any normal ear would, you flip out. You snatch your hands away and nearly shout out, "It's real!"

You must have done something wrong, because Gamzee flinches so hard that he snaps his head back up, foam covered hair falling over his eyes, and it's in this moment when he hisses and clenches his eyes shut, a low grumble trebling from his throat. There's shampoo in his eyes, foamy suds sticking to his eyelashes. Your stomach jumps into your throat. Oh no.

"FUCK," he snarls, frantically rubbing at his eyes. This doesn't seem to alleviate any of the alien's pain, because Gamzee's snarls and growls are growing louder by the second.

"Wait, wait! Stop moving, I can flush it out," you yell over his sneers and jeers. You sit up on your knees and lean over the rim of the bathtub, assessing the situation. You desperately try to gain control, but with him flailing around, you can't really pin point a place on his body to hold onto. You don't even have time to realize that your hand has accidently wrapped around something akin to a spindly horn, and then, your face feels like it's on fucking fire.

You jerk yourself away, falling backwards and landing on your backside. You let out a small hiss of pain as a heat surge flares up your spine. You're sitting on the bathroom floor now, knees bent and hands placed flat on the ground behind you. The entire left side of your face is throbbing and stinging and you fight the urge to cry, because holy _f u c k_ it hurts. It hurts so, so bad. It feels like someone just sliced your skin open and spritzed it with a mixture of rubbing alcohol and lemon juice. You screw your eyes shut and grit your teeth, stamping your feet repeatedly against the tiled floor as another surge of pain lights up your face like fire.

You don't even realize you're whimpering pathetically, tiny sobs escaping your throat as you feel a warm trail of liquid seeping down your neck. You look down and find that your blood is starting to stain the collar of your shirt, and god, there's so much of it. Did he slice your face off or something?

All is quiet in the bathroom save for your pained moans. Gamzee is silent, now cloaked behind the shower curtain. He doesn't make a sound, nor does he move. You shakily place your hand to your face, biting your lip when it does nothing but make your entire face pulsate. Your hand comes back sticky with bright red blood.

You flinch as the sound of rippling water echoes across the bathroom, and you can only watch as Gamzee's black talons curl around the shower curtain, effectively sliding it aside. He slowly turns his head and stares at you, his eyes completely blood shot, but instead of red veins streaking across his sclera, they're the color purple. He looks like he's completely out of it. You can tell he's trying to focus his attention on you, but there's something there that keeps him from maintaining that focus. When he starts making these horrible clicking sounds, garbled syllables catching at the back of his throat, you make your decision. You're losing a lot of blood fast and you can feel the beginnings of a panic attack looming over you.

It doesn't take you long to book it out of there.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: John's plan quickly falls to pieces.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please leave a review if you caaaan. :D


	9. Chapter 9

 

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You're not even going to bother trying to fix yourself up on your own—there's no point. You're starting to feel woozy and half of your face is coated in bright red blood. You hate to admit it, but this time you need your dad. You know by doing this, you're going to blow your whole plan and your dad's going to freak out and ask what the hell is  _going on_ , but right now you can't care less. You just want to make it down the stairs in time before you collapse and die from blood loss.

As soon as you're nearly halfway down the stairs, your pace begins to slow down. You feel the onset of panic slowly lacing through your body. Your legs are starting to turn numb and your knees feel as though they can buckle any second now. Your whole world spins when you accidentally tilt your head to the side. You lean to the right and desperately clutch the banister, using it as support while you make your way down the rest of the stairs. All the while, the blood from your wound hasn't stopped flowing. It's warm and gooey and it's plastered all over the side of your face.

"Dad," you choke out, your voice nothing but a rattled murmur. You clear your throat and try again, your voice cracking. "Dad!" You're really starting to lose it now. Are you in shock? You're in shock. You're afraid your face is going to fall off and you're going to black out only to wake up in a hospital. You don't want to go to a hospital. You hate them. They smell too much like the bitter sterility of medical equipment and medicine. Truthfully, hospitals kind of frighten you.

At the sound of your frantic voice, you can hear the clanking of metal baking sheets as they crash to the floor and the sound of your father's footsteps are rushed and heavy as he bolts out the kitchen. He stops dead in his tracks when he sees you standing by the couch, shaky on your legs with blood dripping down the side of your face. His eyes widen and he rushes to your side, immediately placing his hands on your shoulders.

"John, what the hell!" he bellows, his fingers wrapping around the curve of your shoulders. He steers you to the couch and makes you sit down, your back thumping against the cushion. "What happened!"

You startle awake. You don't know what just happened, but you have a feeling you were nodding off into some other world. All you can do now is focus on your breathing, which is a terrible idea because now you're getting paranoid. Do you always breath like this? Why is it starting to get so difficult? Your chest is tightening and your throat feels like it's constricting and oh god, oh god you need to breath.

"I can't breathe!" you wheeze out, palming your chest. "Am I having a heart attack?" It sure feels like one. Your whole body tingles and you're suddenly aware of every little ache and pain. This is starting to feel so surreal.

"No, no, you're just having a panic attack," your dad rushes out, his hands fretting this way and that. "Hold on.  _Don't move_ , do you hear me? Don't move." He turns around and quickly walks back to the kitchen. As he's in there, you can hear him shuffling around through cupboards and wooden drawers, and then the sound of the faucet turning on makes it all the way to your ears. He comes back out again, this time with a clean dish rag in one hand and a small bucket of water in the other.

"Can you call 911!" you whisper frantically at him, your eyes as wide as saucer plates.

"You need to calm down," he tells you in what he thinks is a composed voice, but you can hear the undertones of sheer dread. You'd feel the same way if your only son somehow managed to get his face nearly ripped off. "Think of something that makes you happy and focus on that. You want some water?"

You nod silently at him, trying to think of something pleasant. Nic Cage flashes across your mind, and so does Fruit Gushers and Con Air and countless other related things that Dave says are complete and utter shit, but you totally disagree with him. Your dad disappears again and later returns with a cup of water, and when he hands it to you, you quickly guzzle it down. Water has never tasted so good before, which is strange because it's never had a taste to begin with. Well, you suppose tap water has a very distinct metallic taste. Hmm.

"Alright, I'm going to turn on the TV and you're going to watch it," your dad orders. You want to ask why, but the tone in his voice is making you not want to question him. He grabs the remote that's perched on the armrest of the sofa and quickly presses the power button. The plasma flickers to life and Bear Grylls is waltzing across the screen  **wearing fucking seal skin**.

Even though your eyes are glued to the television, you watch your father move out of the corner of your eye. He unbuttons the cuffs of his long sleeved dress shirt and rolls the sleeves past his elbows. He then unfolds the towel rag and dunks it into the bucket of water, wringing the rag until only a little of the liquid remains. You now realize what he's about to do.

"No!" you yell at him, pressing your back into the sofa. You can hear him sigh under his breath. You know that sigh; you even managed to classify it. It's the, " _son-please-don't-make-this-any-more-difficult-than-necessary_ " sigh. He's staring at you now with one thick black eyebrow raised, thin lips set in a straight line. Through your mind's clouded haze, you trace the patterns of the various frown lines that scrawl across his face like a map. He even has his hat off, which is something he rarely does. His dense black hair is in a state of disarray, globs of cake mix and icing stuck to the strands. There's also a dash of flour on his left cheek and it's really starting to bug you. You never realized how fast your dad has aged, but it's to be expected. You're not young anymore either.

"I won't touch it, I'm just going to clean around it," he assures you. He manages a shaky smile. "You look like a vampire."

"A sparkly one?" you ask listlessly.

He chuckles at you and stiffly shakes his head, running his hands through his hair. "Turn your head to the side." You do as he says, even though you don't want to. You know he's just going to clean the blood off and not go anywhere near your injury, but you still can't help but feel wary. What if he accidentally presses against it? Your face still feels tender and raw and you don't know if you'll be able to take any more pain.

You hiss on instinct when the rough rag presses against your face, the warm water soothing your skin. The rag doesn't aggravate the cut in any way, but you want him to know what a jerk he's being.

"Stop exaggerating, it doesn't hurt," he calls you out on your game. He takes a step back and assesses you. "Are you feeling okay? Feeling dizzy, sleepy?"

"The panic attack is starting to go away," you tell him quietly, turning your head a bit when he wipes down your neck.

"Good, they don't last more than 25 minutes anyway," he nods his head. You continue to watch TV as he finishes cleaning you up. The scent of your dad has and will always be soothing to you. He smells like sugar and aftershave, and you suppose at first sniff you'd think it'd be an odd combination, but it's  _your_  dad's scent and it's nostalgic and reminds you of the days when he used to take you to the local swap meet where he would literally carry you  _everywhere_  because you'd be too lazy to walk.

"So, what happened?" he breaks the silence, his voice suddenly grave.

"I-I slipped," you breathe hesitantly.

"John this is serious, stop messing around," he lectures you, frustration written clearly across his face.

"But I did!"

"This isn't a joke!" he nearly yells. You stare up at him with wide, trembling eyes. No, no it isn't. "That's it, I'm taking you to the ER," he says and drops the rag into the bucket.

"No!" you cry up at him. "No, no, no!" How could you forget! You suppose you can't blame yourself. You were too focused on your own injuries to worry about the extraterrestrial being currently sitting in your bathtub; at least, you hope he's still in there.

Your dad narrows his eyes at you. "I don't think you understand. I'm not trying to scare you, but that gash looks pretty deep. You don't want it to get infected do you?"

"I'll just disinfect it and put a little gauze over it, it'll close right up! It's not that bad!"

The look on his face screams  _bullshit_. You hang your head in shame. You don't even know what your cut looks like.

"Stay here, I'll go upstairs and get your jacket and some extra clothes," he tells you as he straightens himself. It's as if something shifted a gear inside of you and kicked you into hard-drive. He mustn't go upstairs. You have to keep him away from there! It's still a mess up there and he'll surely peek inside the bathroom! Your secret will be out in the open and your father will probably flip the fuck out. You can't let this happen. You can handle your dad peeking into your room, because you can explain all the purple blood and utter disarray, but you know you won't be able to explain Gamzee. You don't think anyone would be able to explain Gamzee.

"No, it's okay I'll do it. I need to get my phone anyway," you calmly tell him.

"You're going to leak blood all over the place, stay put," he says a little more sternly. He turns away from you and heads towards the stairs. Even though you still feel a little dizzy and your thoughts are still stuck on regulating your breathing, there's something inside you that propels you forward. Before you know it, you're leaping ahead of him up the stairs.

"You won't know where to find it!" you yell back at him. "See, I'm fine! I'll be down in a…" Your voice trails away when you feel a wave of dizziness wash over you. You fall to the side and lean against the banister, clutching the wooden bars with a white-knuckled grip. Your father is immediately at your side and propping you up with his body weight, making sure you don't fall backwards.

"Jesus, John!" he huffs at you irritably, snaking an arm around your waist. "What did I tell you!" You press your forehead against the banister and let out a shaky puff of breath. He readjusts his grip on you and gently turns you around, leading you safely down the stairs. You silently curse at yourself all the while. Once at the bottom of the steps, he helps you sit down at the very last step and turns to glare at you.

"I'm not playing," he forces out, his voice cracking at the end. His momentary anger seems to deflate as his grey-blue eyes sink in worry. You're quite shocked when he suddenly leans down and scoops you into a tight embrace, ever mindful of your searing cut. He holds you to his chest for a long while, carding his fingers through your hair. He whispers, "Just please sit down."

You want to cry. Here you are frustrating your dad when all he's been doing is trying to keep you safe in your time of need, and all you can think about is trying to stop him from heading upstairs. You're afraid he'll discover Gamzee, thus your entire plan falling to shit, when you should really be trying to assuage your father's fears. You're a terrible, terrible son.

He leaves you there sitting on the stairs with your head in your lap. You can feel the hurried thump-thump of your father's footsteps as he climbs the remainder of the steps. A wave of reprieve falls over you when you never hear them stop. It seems he made a bee line to your room and completely passed the bathroom; however, you're not in the clear yet. He could always take a peek into the bathroom once he's done with your room. This is your chance.

Ignoring the swelling pain of your injury, you turn around and practically drag yourself up the stairs, sometimes walking and sometimes crawling. While you do this, your head is spinning and buzzing along with your vision. You must look pitifully pathetic, but this is important. Your dad cannot, absolutely cannot see Gamzee. You wonder why you're still defending an alien who nearly slashed off your face.

You finally make it to the top of the steps, smiling as you get to your unsteady feet. Your bedroom door is open and you can hear your dad shuffling around through your drawers. You carefully creep down the hallway, ignoring the sting in your cheek. You don't believe you shut the bathroom door all the way, and once your arrive at your destination, you find that you were right. Although the bathroom door isn't thrown all the way open, it's still slightly ajar. The steam from inside is slowly billowing out into the hallway and you can smell the scent of shampoo and soap and… blood.

You don't know how you're going to do this. Dad is insisting on driving you to the hospital, but you can't just leave Gamzee here! What if he leaves? What if he goes on a rampage through your house? What if he dies? You have to check on him. You'll just go in real fast, tell him you're alright, make sure he only stays upstairs and hope beyond hope he'll understand and not get into any trouble while you're gone. Just when you're about to push open the bathroom door, your dad steps out into the hallway.

"John!" he barks at you, stomping his way down the corridor. "There's purple stuff all over your room and it reeks of blood! What's going on?" He has your jacket draped over his shoulder and a set of clothes wedged underneath his arm. You immediately snatch your hand away and back away from the bathroom. He notices your sudden movement and narrows his eyes at you, his brow quirking in suspicion.

"What're you doing?" he asks you slowly, coming to a halt barely a foot away from you.

"I was going to go to the bathroom real quick," you answer hastily, a little too hastily.

"Why didn't you just use the bathroom downstairs?" he breathes out, a little exasperated. You immediately clam up and shut your mouth. Shit, you just dug yourself an early grave. You seriously don't know how to answer him, so you don't. You just remain standing there like an idiot in front of your father, your eyes anchored to the floor. You can feel your throat tightening up again, but not from panic. There's that familiar sting of tears welling in the corner of your eyes and you're feeling so stressed and frantic that you think you might just break down. There's nothing worse than the feeling you get when you know you're going to be found out about something. It's the worse feeling in the world.

You finally look back up at him. You practically see the gears turning in his head. He looks at you and then to the bathroom door, then does it again a few more times.

"Does this have anything to do with your cut? And the purple stuff in the backyard?" he asks slowly, methodically. You don't respond, you can't. "John, answer me."

"Dad, let's just go. I'm starting to feel dizzy again," you say in the most broken voice you can muster. You're entire body is shaking and vibrating and you feel like you're going to barf all over the floor.

"What's in the bathroom?"

Your breath hitches.

"John."

When you don't respond this time, your dad takes it into his own hands. He turns to the door and places his palm on the wooden surface. He then slowly begins to push.

"Dad, please don't! Come on, let's just go—NO!"

The door is thrown wide open. Your nose is assaulted with the smell of bloody water and shampoo and band aids, and when the steam begins to clear you can see Gamzee's skinny frame still wading in the murky bathwater.

You don't think you'll ever be able to erase the image of your dad's petrified face. Ever.

**  
**


	10. 10

 

* * *

You feel like crying.

Your dad's eyes are open so wide they're virtually bulging from their sockets, a hint of terror laced in his gaze as he continues to stare across the bathroom where Gamzee sits hunched over his knobby gray knees, strands of damp hair plastered to the sides of his face like thin wire tubing. The bathwater is dyed an ugly dark color and the floor is stained with droplets of purple and red, your blood and his, and for the first time you realize how utterly terrifying it all looks. No wonder your dad looks as if he's just seen a ghost.

"John."

You whimper and let your body sag against the hallway wall, shutting your eyes close when a particularly sharp stab of pain stems from the side of your face. At your feeble cry, your father tears his eyes away from Gamzee and shuffles closer to you, pressing a wide, warm hand to the uninjured part of your face.

"John, what the hell is going on here?" you hear your Dad croak from above you, his hand dropping to the swell of your shoulder. His fingers smear against the blood that has already accumulated there, rubbing small, soothing circles against you. Though he's trying to be reassuring, you can tell how apprehensive he is, as if he would suddenly scoop you into his arms and bolt right out the house. You hate yourself right there and then. You've never seen your dad this petrified before. Before you know it, your cheeks feel warm and moist and there are big fat tear drops streaming down your face and over your chapped lips, sticky and salty as you taste them on the tip of your tongue.

"I'm sorry," you sob, your chest heaving as you take in a deep gulp of breath. You can't think of anything else to say other than streaming out a garbled mess of apologies. You know you're in the wrong here for even thinking you could try to hide something as…something as strange and inhuman as Gamzee. You shouldn't have listened to him; you should have called the police as soon as you had found him! You really don't need Captain Hindsight to tell you all the things you should have done. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." You feel like you're 10 years old again, about to get scolded by your father and dreading every single second of it. You take deep breaths between your cries as a phlegmy membrane of mucus amasses in your throat.

"Who is he?" your dad asks you with an edge to his voice, fingers tightening around your shoulder. Of course he would sound like that—he has no idea who you've just brought into the house.

Gamzee lets out a loud raucous cough, splatters of purple blood ejecting from his mouth into the murky bath water. He lifts his head up, spluttering, hands coming up to rub away at the spittle that coats his mouth. It scares you when he suddenly turns his head and shifts the hair out of his face, staring at you and your dad with sedated purple eyes that are so much like a cat's. Your dad lets out a chaste gasp, subconsciously taking a step backward. He whips his head towards you, eyes even wider, mouth slightly agape.

" _What_  is he?" he whispers. Gamzee coughs again, blood once more spurting from his mouth. Your dad inhales. "It's purple. Why is it purple?" He sound alarmed. You stare up at him with quivering eyes, trickles of blood still streaming down your face.

"I don't know!" you say precariously, trying to convey all the emotions you can't form into words through your eyes. Your dad looks down at you as if he's just had the epiphany of the century.

"All that blood out in the back…?" he trails off.

"Yeah," you breathe, feeling a slight bit delirious. You press the rag cloth even tighter to your face. "Dad, I don't feel so good."

Your father grunts under his breath, frustration evident in the way his whole body tenses up, the way you can see the muscles along his neck clench as he grits his teeth.

"I don't have time for this!" your father finally snaps, swiveling you around. "I have no idea what's going on here, but we'll deal with that later. Getting you to the ER is more important."

"B-but, he- dad! We can't just leave him here! " you stammer, panic starting to course through your body once more. You can't just leave Gamzee alone and unattended in your house! What if he tears the place up or runs away or attracts unwanted attention to himself?

"We're going to have to," your father interjects, a sense of finality to his tone. He then turns back towards the bathroom and warily eyes Gamzee, beads of sweat starting to form on his temples.

"But the house!" you say frantically.

"Forget the house John!" your Dad all but shouts. He bends down until his eyes are level with yours, grey irises serious and solemn. "The house and everything in it are just material things, stuff that can be replaced. I can't replace you son." You immediately close your mouth shut and go ram-rod straight, a thick clump of something that's not exactly mucus lodging in your throat. Your eyes water a bit, irritated and glossy, but you blink them away. You've never seen your dad this out of sorts, or this desperate, and the fact that he's so clearly in a state of distress strikes home . Even though you don't want to go to the hospital or leave Gamzee behind, you also don't want to worry your father by catching some kind of infection and keeling over. The doctors will be able to stitch you up and then you can go back home and deal with all this properly.

You feel your dad urgently push at your back, trying to get you moving towards the stairs again, and before you get any farther away, you peer over your shoulder and managed to yell, "Gamzee, stay here! Do not leave this house! STAY!"

* * *

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

You're in the car holding the cloth to your face, the seat-belt just a little too tight around your chest. There's an unnerving and uncomfortable silence within the cabin of the car, you nor your father saying a word. His fingers are wound tight around the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip, his eyes trained solely on the quiet road ahead.

"John," he prompts you. You raise your head and lean back further into the passenger seat, dreading having to say anything.

"I don't know dad," you let out a pitiful whine, eyes glossing up.

"Okay then, he's wearing a costume,. He's one of your friends from school who happens to be in a rather unfortunate set of circumstances," he mutters to himself, although his voice sounds rather loud in the small vicinity of the car. He's lying to himself and you can hear it. "I can call CPS and get this all settled."

"No," you groan, shaking your head. The act makes you wince as you jostle your wound a little too roughly. Oh no, the word vomit is about to commence, you can feel it. Your tongue feels lose and your mouth doesn't want to close. "I found him in the back yard like that! He was just- he was just sitting there bleeding all over the grass and he looked like he was gonna' die!"

You turn to your father, a strange tingling sensation washing over your body. You tense up. "Dad, what kind of sick person does to that someone? To make them bleed like that? He was so bad that he wasn't moving or doing anything to get help, and that's something you would do in a near-death situation right? You'd call for help right? But he wasn't and he was still bleeding and he looked so fucking terrible! I'm sorry I took him in without your permission, but I had to!"

You're huffing and heaving as if you have just ran a marathon, goosebumps trailing down your back and arms as the image of Gamzee slumped against your white picket fence comes to mind. He had looked so incredibly vulnerable when you had found him slumped over himself, leaking bodily fluids and plastered head to toe in blood and mood. How could you have not done something?

"He looked alright to me," your father murmurs.

"You should have seen him before his bath," you respond, hunching your shoulders. "He looked horrible."

"You should have called the police," your dad rebukes, reaching out a hand to toggle with the radio. He hits the track button and presses it a few times, stopping at track number six. The music of The Ames Brothers trebles softly from the speakers, their harmonic voices having a sort of energizing effect on you. Despite the intense pain stemming from your wound, you find yourself tapping your foot along to the beat of "Rag Mop".

"He told me not to!" you bark out, fiddling with the strap of your seat belt.

"Dammit John, if he told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it? Doesn't it sound just a bit suspicious that he didn't want professional medical help when he clearly needed it? You're probably harboring a convicted felon, a psychopath for all you know!"

"I was scared! Shit like this doesn't happen every day!" you shout in defense.

"Watch your mouth young man!"

Your face flushes an angry red and looks even darker against the blood still running from your wound. You grit your teeth and turn away from him, your eyes settling on the outside world as it passes by in a blur.

"Besides," you whisper, sounding grave. "I…I don't think he's human."

Your dad continues driving, silence hanging thick and heavy in the air, impenetrable even, and when neither of you say anything for a good amount of time, he does a double take and finally looks at you as if he's just noticed your presence.

"You're being serious?" he asks you skeptically, an incredulous laugh to his voice.

"You saw his blood—it's purple!"

"Blood packet with a little food coloring, a classic prank," he retorts.

"You saw the blood outside and in my room and all over the bathroom. You smelled it dad. It smells just like blood."

Your dad clams up at this. "The horns?"

"Real."

"Claws?"

"Real."

"How do you know?" he questions suspiciously, not at all convinced. You solemnly turn your face towards him and lower the rag cloth, pointing towards the gash on the side of your face. Your dad gulps.

"He's real, I touched him," you say softly, rubbing your thumb over the course rag cloth that's nearly drenched in your blood. Your dad makes a grimace and you don't know if it was because of the blood or something else. "His eyes are weird and he has real fangs- he even bit me too!" You hold up your arm with the puncture marks that are still embedded in your flesh. They've probably turned darker by this point, but you're not too sure. You'll have to remove the soggy bandage and wrap it again. You could wait for the doctor to do that though. "I don't have any idea what he is or where he came from, but he did mention something about…"

Your father turns on his blinker and makes a left turn, your body shifting in the seat. "What?" he queries.

"..another planet."

He lets out a frustrated laugh, using one hand to wipe at his face in irritation. "This is absolutely ridiculous John. You can't tell me that you actually believe- ."

"I'll show you! When we get home, if he's still there, I'll show you okay?" you say, a little exasperated. "I'll talk to him. Let's talk to him. We'll both find out what the heck's happening here."

"I'm going to call the police when we get home," he mutters tersely.

"No! He isn't human! You've seen the movies, you've seen what happens!"

"Then Sector 7."

You can't believe your dad is joking at a time like this. Is this happening? Is this a thing that's happening right now? Is he really making a reference from  _Transformers_  of all movies? How can he remember that anyway; you only watched it with him one time! He's the kind of guy who'll only watch old TV shows and movies from the 40s to the 60s anyway, stuff like _Harvey_ and  _Pandora and the Flying Dutchman_.

His eyes shoot a quick glimpse at you and you notice that he starts to grow peeved when he sees that you're still staring at him as if he's grown two heads. He frowns at you.

"What are we going to tell the doctors?" you whisper. He remains silent for a second, then sighs.

"Just tell them what you told me. You were doing a science project and everything went terribly wrong. "

* * *

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Four hours later and the both of you are still in the car parked outside your garage sitting silence as you both stare at nothing in particular. Your face is newly stitched and very sore to the touch, and without that extra dose of morphine pumping through your system, you imagine you would be in a heck of a lot of pain right about now. You have a plastic Walgreens bag filled with Advil bottles, rolls of gauze, a heavy duty tube of Neosporin, and some other medical supplies that you convinced your dad on getting. You can never have too many medical supplies in the house.

"You realize we're going to have to take him to the hospital if his injuries turn out to be serious," your father breaks the silence, resting his fingers along his temple. He shoots you a glimpse.

"They're not too bad as far as I know," you respond slowly. "He's really banged up and he has scratches here and there, but I don't think anything's broken."

"We'll see. Well then, shall we?"

You nod at him and open the car door, sliding the plastic bag handle over you wrist. Your cheek throbs and aches faintly and it feels sort of heavy with the thick bandage over it.

Once both of you are out of the car and the vehicle is sealed and locked, you both shoot each other wary glances and move across the driveway, your steps meticulous and unhurried. Every step you take your heart beats just a bit faster, a bit louder, and the by the time you're both in front of the door with your dad's keys brandished out in front of him, you almost feel your knees start to buckle. You really, really hope that Gamzee's still in there. You hope he didn't go bat-shit insane while you guys were away and terrorized the house. You hope he didn't manage to hurt himself.

The sound of a quick, precise click brings you out of your thoughts. You turn your head to the side and find that your dad has a switchblade in his other hand, the sharpened metal gleaming in the last residual remnants of sunlight. In another hour, it would be completely dark out.

"Dad!" you hiss at him, pointing to the blade. "It's not like he's going to charge and attack!"

"You don't know that son," he quickly replies, thumbing the blade's handle. "On second thought, I want you to stay out here. Wait by the car; here are the keys just in case." He throws the car keys at you and you catch them against your chest, quickly stuffing them into your pocket. You make to protest, but he quickly silences you with a sweltering glare. You grumble and waddle your way towards the car, leaning your back against the passenger side door. Your dad peers over his shoulder and mouths the word "stay" and turns away, jamming the key into the lock and turning it. You watch with apprehension as he slowly pushes the door open, taking a moment to peer inside from his place on the front porch, before he holds the blade a little higher and takes a tentative step inside. His form is lost to you and you can feel yourself start to panic. You imagine scenarios where Gamzee thunders his way down the stairs lost in a delirious stupor, you imagine him hiding behind the couch and pouncing on your dad when he isn't looking, razor sharp talons tearing into your father's flesh as easily as they had torn into your own.

"Fuck this," you whisper frantically to yourself. You have to make sure your dad's okay. You can deal with scolding later. You peel yourself away from the car and begin twisting the plastic bag handles until it braids into a rope, hauling the sack of supplies over your shoulder. It was better than nothing. You step onto the porch and cautiously shuffle your way over the threshold, eyes immediately scanning the surrounding area. Everything appears to be normal. The living room looks intact, the kitchen a little messy scattered with empty cake molds and bowls of batter.

"Dad," you call out hesitantly, your voice weak sounding.

"Up here John, in your room, everything's fine," your father responds instantly, his voice distant and muffled while the low baritone reverberates off the house walls. You halt in your tracks, letting the bag drop to the floor. That was sort of anticlimactic, but you're not complaining. You rush over to the stairs and take your time scaling them, halting right before your doorway.

You eye the scene with wide eyes. Your dad stands close to you, near the doorway, staring across your room with a dubious expression. Gamzee is sprawled across your bed naked and dry. His hair is sprawled about your pillow and frames his face sparingly, eyes closed and bare chest slowly heaving up and down. His gray skin is littered with purple crusted cuts and dark bruises, and judging by your dad's expression, you can tell he's disturbed by the sheer amount of damage done to the lanky, wiry frame. Gamzee is asleep, low thrums and vibrations echoing from his throat as he breathes. His long limbs are also splayed along the bed, his feet hanging over the edge of your mattress—he's so tall. The only thing covering his body was a seashell-print yellow towel shielding his lower regions. You stare up at your dad and arch a brow.

"I threw a towel on him," he frowns, his expression on the borderline of either puzzlement or revulsion. "I think you may be right John. About him not being human."

"You believe me now?" you ask incredulously, leaning against the door frame. Your father gives you a quick nod. "What made you change your mind?"

"I'd rather not talk about it," he grimaces. You merely shrug your shoulders. As long as he believes you, you don't really care. You take a few steps forward, your father's hand shooting out in front of you to stop you from moving any further. You shoot him a wide-eyed stare.

"Don't go near him," he whispers down at you. "If he could do that to your face, he can do much more."

"But it was kind of my fault he scratched me," you blurt, staring across at Gamzee's slumbering form. "I accidentally got shampoo in his eyes and he kinda' wigged out on me."

"What about the bite mark?"

"Again, I got too close."

"Then we shouldn't keep him here," your father says as he takes a final glance at Gamzee, before turning around and stepping out into the hallway. You follow after him, shooting glances over your shoulder.

"He needs our help!" you protest.

"He's dangerous."

"But he's not human! They'll do stuff to him."

"John, please don't argue with me on this," your dad huffs through an aggravated sigh.

"No!" you taunt, stepping in front of your father. "He's clearly not from here and he's really hurt, how would you feel if you were suddenly thrown on a different planet while you're bleeding to death, and when you think you're going to get help from someone nice, they turn you into the police, or worse, scientists! They'll have a field day with him!"

Your dad doesn't say anything in response; he merely stares at you with a squint to his eyes. "You don't know if he's from a different planet."

"He could be! Jesus dad!" you grumble, throwing your hands in the air. "You've taught me all my life to be kind to people, to give them the benefit of the doubt, and dammit, that's what I'm trying to do." By this time, your chest is heaving and your face feels heated, your pulse rate skyrocketing as smalls flames of anger lick at your insides. You're frustrated and irritated and you just don't get why he can't understand you. He hadn't talked to Gamzee, so he doesn't know about the strange yet friendly personality he had. The way he talked to you as if you were a longtime friend.

Your father's heavy set sigh makes you calm down, refocusing your attention back on him. He looks defeated and tired and just a little bit miffed, but soon enough, a very small smile plays on his lips and he raises a hand to ruffle it through your messy black hair.

"I'm proud of you," he says softly, and even though you're still kind of mad, you smile back at him. The breath you've been holding whooshes out of you and you let your shoulders slump. "But we're going to keep him in your room until he wakes up and I don't want you going anywhere near him until I look him over myself."

You nod.

"In the meantime," he continues. "We're going to go downstairs and have something to eat, then we'll go set up the guest room."

By now, your smile is wide and your injured cheek kind of hurts, but you can't help it. You're relieved and happy and you're so, so glad that you managed to get your dad on your side.

"But listen John," he interrupts, looking down at you with a stern stair. Your smile falters and you go still. "We're going to have to keep this under wraps until we figure out who he is and where he comes from. Since you're so adamant about helping him, it's up to you not to breathe a word about this to anyone, not even your little online friends. And I don't want you going near him without me, you hear."

You nod enthusiastically. "I swear I won't say anything, my lips are sealed. Thank you, thank you dad." And you mean it. You want to thank him for being an amazing father, for being so understanding, for not blowing this way out of proportion, because you know for a fact that it could have gone way down south.

"I swear John, don't even go near you room unless I'm there," he stresses again. "We're going to avoid this floor for a while, at least until we're done eating." He turns around and closes your bedroom door and then grabs your arm and leads you back down the stairs. You watch his back as he climbs down. His shoulders are still hunched; his back stiff and tense and you know he still feels on edge, uncomfortable, as if at any moment, Gamzee would come rocketing out the room to kill you both. You have a feeling he's going to be stuffing all sorts of baking utensils and knives in his apron just so he could have some sort of weapons arsenal on him to make him feel safe. You won't be surprised if you find cans of shaving cream in there too.

You both head to the kitchen where you take a seat at the wooden mahogany table, practically draping yourself over the hard surface. Your dad looks into the fridge and rummages around through its contents.

"You still feel up for a burger?" he asks, taking out a bottle of ketchup and mayonnaise. You give him a weak thumbs up.

  



End file.
